Nigel Si­mon

The na­tion­al Un­der-21 women's hock­ey squad suf­fered a 4–1 loss at the hands of vis­it­ing Lebanon Val­ley Col­lege of Penn­syl­va­nia, USA, in a prac­tice match at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre, Tacarigua, on Wednes­day night. The lone scor­er for T&T in a match, played in three 30-minute pe­ri­ods, was Shenice Au­guste. In what was a fair­ly even con­test in terms of ball pos­ses­sion, the lo­cal Un­der-21 squad saw a num­ber of chances just bare­ly miss­ing the tar­get. Coach Har­ris in­di­cat­ed that fin­ish­ing, first touch and pass­ing were a few ar­eas that need­ed par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion.

He said a great deal of em­pha­sis al­so need­ed to be placed on the fit­ness lev­el of the team in prepa­ra­tion for next year's Ju­nior Women's Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship. De­spite the loss, Har­ris, a for­mer na­tion­al se­nior team coach said, al­though it was al­ways a great morale for the team and its sup­port­ers when it won, the pri­ma­ry aim of the match was to as­sess the lev­el of the lo­cal squad in a match sit­u­a­tion. "It was a good show­ing by the play­ers giv­en it was the first time these play­ers had played to­geth­er as a unit.

Lebanon Val­ley Col­lege is an Na­tion­al Col­le­giate Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NCAA) Di­vi­sion Three team from the Mid­dle At­lantic Con­fer­ence, and is coached by Car­ol Miller. In their last nine sea­sons, Lebanon Val­ley Col­lege won 150 match­es, made five NCAA tour­na­ment ap­pear­ances, in­clud­ing two Fi­nal-Four ap­pear­ances and pro­duced 12 All-Amer­i­can ath­letes. On Thurs­day, na­tion­al women's Big-Four cham­pi­ons, Notre Dame led by a hand­ful of goals from na­tion­al women's team stand­out, Bel­gium-based Blair Wynne out­gunned Lebanon Val­ley Col­lege 8–6. Wynne net­ted five goals while her cousin Stephanie White­man, Abi­gail Williams and Dana-Lee De Gannes added one each for the Dames.

T&T Un­der-21 women's team:

Aime Olton, Elise Olton, Kristin Abreu, Zene Hen­ry, Shan­tal Williams, Daniel­la Mar­tin, Lisa Smith, Stacey-Ann Gomez, Shenice Cud­joe, Sa­van­nah De Fre­itas, Tama­ra De No­bri­ga, Stephanie Smith, Jes­si­ca Lee, Dana-Lee De Gannes, Yael Jag­bir, Bri­an­na Govia, Anya Sealy, Tamia Roach, Maria Thomas, Char­nice Cato, Re­nee Voisin, An­abelle Castagne, Kay­la Braith­waite, Kichelle Grif­fith, Shenice Au­guste, Abi­gail Williams.