Nigel Si­mon

The T&T women's hock­ey team will flick off their cam­paign in Sec­ond Round qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the FIH World Hock­ey League against world 19th ranked Scot­land from 2.30 pm to­day at the De­odoro Field Hock­ey Cen­tre, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The "Ca­lyp­so Stick­women" al­so face Lon­don 2012 Olympic par­tic­i­pants USA (tenth), Chile (18th), Uruguay (50th) and host na­tion Brazil (51st) in the round-robin se­ries, at the end of which the two high­est fin­ish­ers will se­cure places in round three.

The six-team tour­na­ment is part of the In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion's (FIH) quest to make the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for the World Cup and the Olympics as in­clu­sive as pos­si­ble and serves to en­cour­age and fa­cil­i­tate more in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion world­wide by min­i­miz­ing trav­el costs to the small­er hock­ey coun­tries.

The Hock­ey World League has four rounds, run­ning from Au­gust 2012 to Feb­ru­ary 2014. This com­pe­ti­tion is T&T's sec­ond step to­ward qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2014 World Cup.

The Alan­na Lewis-skip­pered T&T women's team ranked 27th in the world ad­vanced to the sec­ond round of qual­i­fi­ca­tion af­ter end­ing third in the six-team Round One qual­i­fi­ca­tion se­ries at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre, Tacarigua, last No­vem­ber with nine points be­hind fel­low qual­i­fiers Cana­da (15 pts) and Uruguay (12 points).

In their five match­es, T&T had vic­to­ries over Guyana (5-0), Venezuela (5-1) and Bar­ba­dos (7-0) while they suf­fered de­feats against Uruguay (0-2) and Cana­da (0-4).

In­clud­ed in the T&T squad are teenagers Bri­an­na Govia (15-year-old), 18-year-old pair Elise Olton and Kay­la Braith­waite and Arielle Cowie while 20-year-old Brit­tney Hingh and the ex­pe­ri­enced Oire Trot­man make their re­turn.

In to­day's open­er, USA meets Brazil from 8 am while Chile and Uruguay face-off in an all-South Amer­i­can en­counter from 10 am. (NS)