JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Pantin, Guzman lead T&T to Venezuela

by

20140616

A six-mem­ber na­tion­al bad­minton team led by Ker­wyn Pan­tin and Solan­gel Guz­man will ar­rive in Cara­cas, Venezuela to­day to com­pete at the 2014 Venezuela In­ter­na­tion­al Tour­na­ment from Thurs­day to Sun­day.

Pan­tin, an eight-time na­tion­al men's sin­gles cham­pi­on, will make a re­turn to the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na af­ter a four-year ab­sence. Pan­tin will be joined by Cana­di­an based Nicholas Bonkowsky, who placed sec­ond at the Na­tion­al Bad­minton tour­na­ment in April. Pan­tin will par­tic­i­pate in the men's sin­gles, the men's dou­bles with Bonkowsky and the mixed dou­bles with Nekeisha Blake. Bonkowsky will al­so fea­ture in the men's sin­gles and the mixed dou­bles with Guz­man.

The ladies will be rep­re­sent­ed by the coun­try's top play­er Guz­man, who is al­so one of the re­gion's strongest play­ers. Guz­man is the two-time women's sin­gles de­fend­ing cham­pi­on at the Venezuela In­ter­na­tion­al. Join­ing Guz­man will be for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on Blake, who re­cent­ly made a come­back to the sport af­ter a two-year hia­tus due to a knee in­jury and surgery. Both Guz­man and Blake will bat­tle in the women's sin­gles be­fore team­ing up to con­test the women's dou­bles.

Top play­ers from South Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope and the rest of the Caribbean are ex­pect­ed to com­pete as in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ing points are up for grabs for the up­com­ing Olympic Games in 2016.

The T&T play­ers have been in­volved in in­tense train­ing, that is be­ing con­duct­ed by na­tion­al head coach Daron Dasent. Dasent will be joined by Melvin Thomas, who will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Bad­minton World Fed­er­a­tion (BWF) Coach­ing course. Dasent has par­tic­i­pat­ed in BWF cours­es be­fore and in 2004 was part of the USA High Per­for­mance Cen­tre Coach­ing Course in Col­orado Springs. Un­der Dasent's coach­ing ex­per­tise, team T&T has won bronze medals at the 2010 team Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games and at the 2005 Caribbean Bad­minton Cham­pi­onships.

Thomas has al­so been a very in­stru­men­tal in­di­vid­ual to T&T Bad­minton, hav­ing been in­volved as ei­ther a na­tion­al coach or tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion for the past 30 years.

?


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored