Trinidad and To­ba­go's Na­tion­al Un­der 20 women's team has been show­ered with prais­es af­ter plac­ing fourth in the 2014 Con­ca­caf Un­der-20 Women's Cham­pi­onship in the Cay­man Is­lands on Sun­day. Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, An­tho­ny Car­mona and Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee have led trib­utes for an out­fit that was on the brink of be­com­ing the first team to rep­re­sent the Caribbean at the Fi­fa Un­der-20 Women's World Cup. The Trinida­di­ans were five min­utes away from se­cur­ing a 3-2 win against Cos­ta Ri­ca when an equalis­er forced them in­to ex­tra time which the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans ex­ploit­ed to win 7- 3.

Pres­i­dent Car­mona said the Un­der-20 women "dis­played grit and de­ter­mi­na­tion to be­come re­al con­tenders in the Cay­man Is­lands qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment" "I can tell you I felt a great sense of na­tion­al pride and joy when I saw how those young women fought on be­half of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go" Car­mona said dur­ing the launch of a foot­ball pro­gramme. The T&T So­ca Princess­es led 3-1 at the half and seemed on course to­wards cre­at­ing his­to­ry af­ter two first half goals from cap­tain Anique Walk­er. Tim Kee said the women played hard and the de­feat will give an in­di­ca­tor to the tech­ni­cal staff and coach­es about what needs to be done to en­sure the team re­mains com­pet­i­tive in the fu­ture.

"From what I saw yes­ter­day, re­mem­ber we led 3-1 at half time, I get the im­pres­sion that they were leg-weary, be­cause it was a hec­tic sched­ule and that will of course point our tech­ni­cal staff in a di­rec­tion to cor­rect things like that," he said. "I know some ini­tia­tives have been tak­en in the past about fit­ness and the lev­el of pre­pared­ness that is nec­es­sary for those types of games and I know that we made a de­ci­sion to make it poli­cies, so you would not see a re­cur­rence of that mov­ing for­ward, but those things do not hap­pen overnight." The Unit­ed States record­ed a 4-0 win over Mex­i­co to cap­ture the Con­ca­caf Women's Un­der- 20 Cham­pi­onship for a third straight time. Both teams al­ready had qual­i­fied for the Fi­fa U-20 World Cup and will be joined by Cos­ta Ri­ca for the event to be host­ed in Cana­da this sum­mer.