T&T na­tion­al ju­nior men’s hock­ey team came up short in its bid to reach the semi­fi­nals of the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Cham­pi­onship af­ter falling to Ar­genti­na 9-1 in the team's must-win fi­nal Pool A round-robin match in San­ti­a­go, Chile on Wednes­day.

Com­ing off a tough 2-3 de­feat to USA on Tues­day, T&T field­ing a team that is mi­nus six play­ers, in­clud­ing five of its starters who test­ed pos­i­tive for the Covid-19 virus on the eve of its de­par­ture last Thurs­day need­ed to win against Ar­genti­na to keep the coun­try's qual­i­fi­ca­tion hopes to the FIH World Cup in South Africa lat­er this year, alive.

But coach Dar­ren Cowie's squad which is still reel­ing from the ef­fects of the USA 3-2 de­feat on Tues­day, and with­out Covid-19 pos­i­tive team­mates - Shawn Phillip, Ethan Reynos, Roshane Hamil­ton, Tyrese Ben­jamin, and Caleb Guis­sepi, found the go­ing tough and trailed af­ter 13th minute via a goal from Gre­go­rio Ibar­ra.

The deficit soon bal­looned to four goals in the sec­ond quar­ter and out of T&T’s reach. The Ar­gen­tines lead 4-0 at the half-time in­ter­val.

Ar­genti­na was quick out of the blocks in the sec­ond half and added goals from Joaquin Toscani in the 32nd and Nazareno Gar­cia, in the 35th to ex­tend their lead to 6-0 be­fore Eng­land-based T&T cap­tain Teague Mar­cano of Hock­ey League Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion club, Hamp­stead & West­min­ster pulled one back for T&T in the 44th minute, his sec­ond in as many match­es.

The South Amer­i­cans were not done scor­ing and got fur­ther strikes from Nahuel Gomez in the 55th, and a minute lat­er Joaquin Toscani com­plet­ed the 9-1 rout.

With the loss, T&T end­ed bot­tom of the three-team pool with­out a point while Ar­genti­na end­ed at the top of the group with six points, three more than the USA who the Ar­gen­tines blanked 2-0 on Mon­day.

In Pool B on Tues­day, Cana­da se­cured a top-two fin­ish with six points af­ter de­feat­ing Brazil 3-0, while host Chile out­played Mex­i­co 5-1 for the top spot with the max­i­mum of nine points ahead of the semi­fi­nals.

When com­pe­ti­tion re­sumes on Fri­day, T&T will meet Pool B fourth-placed fin­ish­ers Brazil, who were beat­en in all three of their match­es, in the sev­enth-place play­off from 10 am with the win­ner ad­vanc­ing to Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal day fifth place bat­tle with Mex­i­co, which end­ed third in Pool B from 8 am.

RE­SULTS

Au­gust 24

Cana­da 3 vs Brazil 0

T&T 2 (Teague Mar­cano 12th, Joel Daniel 30th) vs USA 3 (Jatin Shar­ma 21st, Mehtab Gre­w­al 30th, Brett Eis­ner 55th)

Mex­i­co 1 vs Chile 5

Yes­ter­day:

Ar­genti­na 9 ( Gre­go­rio Ibar­ra 13th, Nahuel Gomez 21st, 55th, Bruno Stel­la­to 24th, Nazareno Gar­cia 25th , 35th, 49th, Joaquin Toscani 32 nd , 56th) vs T&T 1 (Teague Mar­cano 44th)