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.

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