Nigel Si­mon

Kiel Mur­ray scored a hat-trick to earn Paragon a 5-5 draw with De­fence Force in the bat­tle of sec­ond placed teams in the T&T Hock­ey Board Men's Cham­pi­onships Di­vi­sion at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre, Tacarigua on Sat­ur­day night. Go­ing in­to the match, both teams trailed three-time reign­ing cham­pi­on, Petrotrin (15 points), by three points and were des­per­ate for a win to keep pace with the front-run­ner.

Paragon was first to score when Mur­ray net­ted in the tenth minute but from the re­sult­ing restart, for­mer na­tion­al play­er Neil Lash­ley drew the "Teteron Men" lev­el.

The ear­ly goal rush con­tin­ued in the 12th minute when an­oth­er of Paragon's na­tion­al play­ers' Co­gie But­ler re­stored his team's lead at 2-1 on­ly for his na­tion­al team-mate, mid­fiel­d­er­Mar­cus James to re­ply for De­fence Force a minute lat­er fol­lowed by An­tho­ny Morales go-ahead item in the 18th to put the lat­ter ahead for the first time at 3-2.

With de­fence seem­ing­ly a sec­ondary mat­ter for both teams, Mur­ray fired in his sec­ond of the match in the 24th for Paragon to get back on even terms at 3-3, how­ev­er, De­fence Force went in­to the half-time in­ter­val, 4-3 ahead thanks to Shane Leg­erton's 32nd field goal.With­in four min­utes of the re­sump­tion, But­ler scored to lev­el the score at 4-4 and with half-an-hour left the it was still any­body's guess as to who would take all three points.

In the 45th minute, De­fence Force made an­oth­er claim via Morales' sec­ond strike of the match, for a 5-4 ad­van­tage, but eight min­utes lat­er, Mur­ray reg­is­tered his third item of the match to com­plete his hat-trick and lev­el the score for the fifth and fi­nal time in the match to earn his team a share of the points.The drawn re­sult left both teams on 13 points, but while De­fence Force has played six match­es, Paragon and lead­ers Petrotrin have played five.

Al­so at Tacarigua, for­mer league cham­pi­ons, Queen's Park moved in­to fourth on the eight-team ta­ble with nine points from four match­es af­ter a 2-0 shut-out of Malvern, with Nicholas Ca­ma­cho (38th) and Guyana's Jer­azano Bell (52nd) on tar­get. Over at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Train­ing Field in Ba­co­let, Coro­na Fa­ti­ma came from be­hind twice to earn a 2-2 draw against Par­adise, se­cur­ing both teams their first points of the sea­son.

In the Women's Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion, Shandy Carib Mag­no­lias and Paragon picked up con­trast­ing vic­to­ries.Over at Ba­co­let, for­mer T&T stand­out, Stacey Siu Butt con­vert­ed a 56th minute penal­ty stroke past na­tion­al goal­keep­er Jeanelle Car­ring­ton to hand Mag­no­lias a 1-0 win over Par­adise, its sec­ond win from three match­es to join Har­vard Mar­itime Check­ers on six points.

Paragon moved in­to sec­ond spot with sev­en points from three match­es, two adrift of un­beat­en lead­ers and reign­ing cham­pi­ons, Notre Dame af­ter clob­ber­ing Ven­tures, 8-1 led by two goals each from Pauline Joseph, Kristin Thomp­son and Zene Hen­ry, and one apiece by Keima Gar­den­er and Danielle Thomp­son. Saman­tha Kissoon got Ven­tures' con­so­la­tion item sev­en min­utes from full-time.

In the Trin­i­ty Men's Di­vi­sion, Par­adise slammed Fa­ti­ma 5-1 to join Paragon on ten points, two be­hind the trio of Queen's Park, Malvern and Notre Dame, who are yet to drop points.

How­ev­er, in the Trin­i­ty Women's ti­tle race, the Dames (12 points) en­joys a two-points lead over De­fence Force, Mag­no­lias and Check­ers.On Sat­ur­day, De­fence Force trounced Petrotrin 5-0 while the Dames whipped the "Teteron Women", 4-2 a day lat­er.

Carib (12 points) opened a three points gap at the top of the Mixed Vet­er­ans stand­ings af­ter it won by de­fault from Notre Dame while Queen's park moved in­to sec­ond af­ter spank­ing Petrotrin 6-2 led by a dou­ble from Gary Grif­fith.Fa­ti­ma dropped in­to a two-way tie with Queen's Park on sev­en points each af­ter it was held 2-2 by Par­adise in the Un­der-19 Boys com­pe­ti­tion, and Mag­no­lias im­proved to max­i­mum nine points, three more than Notre Dame, Paragon and Malvern in the Un­der-19 Girls af­ter its 5-0 de­mo­li­tion of Par­adise.

Re­sults

Fri­day

Mixed Vet­er­ans

QPCC 6 (Azad Ali 3rd, Gary Grif­fith 5th, 6th, Raphael Govia 29th, Wen­dell Newal­lo 50th, An­dre Atall 34th) vs Petrotrin 2 (K. Is­sac 20th, 24th).

Carib 3 vs Notre Dame 0 - By de­fault.

Sat­ur­day

Men's Cham­pi­onship

Fa­ti­ma 2 (Col­in Young 34th, Ish­mael Camp­bell 42nd) vs Par­adise 2 (Ver­nel Rivers 14th, Du­ane John 23rd).

QPCC 2 (Nicholas Ca­ma­cho 38th, Jer­ry Bell 52nd) vs Malvern 0.

Paragon 5 (Kiel Mur­ray 10th, 24th, 53rd, Co­gie But­ler 12th, 39th) vs De­fence Force 5 (An­tho­ny Morales 18th, 45th, Neil Lash­ley 10th, Mar­cus James 13th, Shane Leg­erton 32nd).

Women's Cham­pi­onship

SC Mag­no­lais 1 (Stacey Siu Butt 56th) vs Par­adise 0.

Paragon 8 (Pauline Joseph 11th, 26th, Kristin Thomp­son 17th, 46th, Zene Hen­ry 35th, 69th, Keima Gar­den­er 50th, Danielle Thomp­son 66th) vs Ven­tures 1 Saman­tha Kissoon 63rd).

Trin­i­ty Men

Par­adise 5 (Jarel Thomp­son 2, Omari Brath­waite, Desmond Archer, Karl Stephens) vs Fa­ti­ma 1 (Shane Newal­lo).

Trin­i­ty Women

De­fence Force 5 (Sum­mer Hec­tor 20th, 23rd, 25th, Wynette Camp­bell 35th, Joanne Sci­pio 64th) vs Petrotrin 0.

U-19 Boys

Par­adise 2 (Nave Roach, Omari Brath­waite) vs Fa­ti­ma 2 (Jor­dan Vieira 2).

QPCC 3 (Zachary Clarke 35th, 65th, Ger­vais Dos San­tos 8th) vs Carib 0.

U-19 Girls

Mag­no­lias 5 (Bri­an­na Govia 2, Kait­lyn Olton 2, Saarah Olton) vs Par­adise 0

Paragon 4 (Gin­neil Pope 14th, Gabrielle Thomp­son 35th, Lisa Smith 39th, Zene Hen­ry 62nd, Fe­li­cia King 70th) vs Notre Dame 1 (Tamia Roach 46th).

Sun­day

Trin­i­ty Women

Notre Dame 4 (Shantell Gar­cia 13th, 23rd, Teneil Gar­cia 11th, Car­ol White­man 69th) vs De­fence Force 2 (Wynette Camp­bell 4th, 47th).