Nigel Si­mon

Zene Hen­ry scored with a minute left on the clock as Paragon edged past Har­vard Mar­itime Check­ers in their T&T Hock­ey Board Women's Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion "Big-Four" on a rainy Thurs­day night at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua.With reign­ing league cham­pi­on Notre Dame beat­ing Malvern 5-4 in its open­er on Wednes­day at the same venue, both Paragon and Check­ers were ea­ger for a win­ning start as well.

How­ev­er, it was Paragon which took the lead via Hen­ry as ear­ly as the fifth minute be­fore Check­ers drew lev­el in the 17th, through an own-goal.Sev­en min­utes be­fore the in­ter­val, Paragon which trails the Dames on the league ta­ble in sec­ond spot at the end of the first round re­gained the lead through na­tion­al for­ward, Kristin Thomp­son to take a 2-1 ad­van­tage in­to the break.Six min­utes in­to the sec­ond-half, na­tion­al de­fend­er Kwylan Jag­gas­sar got Check­ers on lev­el terms for the sec­ond time in the match, and with the min­utes tick­ing away it looked as though both teams would have to set­tle for a share of the points.But Hen­ry struck with a minute to go, to earn her team full points and a share of the ta­ble lead go­ing in­to to­day's match against the Dames from 6pm while Malvern comes up against Check­ers from 2pm.

De­fence Force slip past­Paragon men in penal­ty shootout

Goal­keep­er Car­los Stephens came up big for De­fence Force as he pulled off two penal­ty-stroke saves to earn his team a 3-1 penal­ty-shootout win over de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Paragon in its Men's Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion "Big-Four" du­el on Thurs­day night fol­low­ing a 3-3 draw.The "Army/Coast-Guard com­bi­na­tion were quick­ly off the mark when na­tion­al for­ward Shane Leg­erton scored af­ter on­ly three min­utes but 20 min­utes lat­er Bar­ry Clarke replied for Paragon, on­ly for for­mer Paragon play­er, Javon Wood­ward to give Paragon a 2-1 half-time lead with his 26th minute field goal.

Sev­en min­utes af­ter the restart Joel Bod­king tied up the match for Paragon and in the 49th minute, he got his sec­ond of the match to give his team the lead for the first time at 3-2.That lead on­ly last­ed 10 min­utes though as for­mer na­tion­al play­er, Neil Lash­ley lev­eled the match for De­fence Force to send the match in­to a penal­ty-shootout com­pe­ti­tion where Stephens came up big for his team deny­ing two of Paragon's first three at­tempts from na­tion­al trio, Kiel Mur­ray, Christo­pher Sci­pio and Alan Hen­der­son while the oth­er missed the tar­get.De­fence Force's vet­er­ans Nicholas Wren and Lash­ley al­so missed with their team's first two at­tempts be­fore cap­tain Mick­el Pierre con­vert­ed for a 1-0 lead af­ter three at­tempts each.

Mar­cus James then scored for a 2-0 De­fence Force lead be­fore Co­gie But­ler fi­nal­ly con­vert­ed for Paragon to give his team some hope.But, it was all in vain as na­tion­al ri­fle shoot­er and for­mer hock­ey stand-out Roger Daniel calm­ly scored his team's fifth at­tempt to seal a 3-1 tri­umph and two points to trail Petrotrin (three points) while Paragon has one point.To­day, De­fence Force will meet Petrotrin from 8 pm, with the lat­ter seek­ing a sec­ond out­right vic­to­ry af­ter edg­ing Queen's Park 2-1 In the oth­er match, the Parkites bat­tle Paragon from 4 pm.

Thurs­day's Re­sults

Women's Cham­pi­onship:

Paragon 3 (Zene Hen­ry 5th, 69th, Kristin Thomp­son 28th) vs HM Check­ers 2 (own goal 17th, Kwylan Jag­gas­sar 41st)

Men's Cham­pi­onship

De­fence Force 3 (Shane Leg­erton 2nd, Javon Wood­ward 26th, Neil Lash­ley 59th) vs Paragon 3 (Joel Bod­kin 42nd, 49th, Bar­ry Clarke 23rd)

Re­main­ing Big-Four fix­tures

To­day:

Women: Malvern vs HM Check­ers, 2 pm; Paragon vs Notre Dame, 6 pm

Men: QPCC vs Paragon; 4 pm; De­fence Force vs Petrotrin, 8 pm

To­mor­row: Women:

Notre Dame vs HM Check­ers, 1 pm; Malvern vs Paragon; 5 pm

Men: Petrotrin vs Paragon, 3 pm; QPCC vs De­fence Force, 7 pm