Cheque­da De Boulet was the lone play­er to win her match as Trinidad and To­ba­go got off to a los­ing start in the Se­nior Caribbean Re­gion­al Bad­minton Con­fed­er­a­tion (CARE­BA­CO) Cham­pi­onship team events host­ed by the Ja­maica Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion (JBA) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy (UTECH) Au­di­to­ri­um in Kingston, Ja­maica, on Mon­day night.

Fac­ing off with Bar­ba­dos in the open­ing match of the three-team round-robin se­ries, T&T went un­der to the Bar­ba­di­ans 3-2.

In the mixed dou­bles cur­tain-rais­er in the best-of-five tie, T&T’s Aditya Ma­haraj and Nekeisha Blake were de­feat­ed by Bar­ba­di­ans Shae Mar­tin and Sab­ri­na Scott 19-21 and 13-21 for a 1-0 lead.

T&T’s Yan­nic In­niss was then swept aside by Bar­ba­di­an Ken­nie King in the men’s sin­gles 11-21, 13-21 be­fore De Boulet won her women’s sin­gles against Mony­a­ta Riv­iera 21-15, 21-15 to get T&T on the board at 2-1.

How­ev­er, T&T’s joy was short-lived as Ja­son Ram­jass and Ryan Sinanan were then out­played in the men’s dou­bles, 13-21 and 14-21, by King and Mar­tin to sur­ren­der the tie 1-3.

With the tie al­ready de­cid­ed, Blake and De Boulet then won the women’s dou­bles 21-10, 14-21, 21-10 against Sha­nia Forde and Riv­iera for a 2-3 fi­nal score.

The T&T con­tin­gent, which al­so in­cludes Cheyenne Bho­la, was ex­pect­ed to meet host Ja­maica in their sec­ond and fi­nal match last night (Tues­day) while Bar­ba­dos faces Ja­maica to­day from 5.30 pm, with the out­come of the over­all team com­pe­ti­tion to be de­cid­ed.

The ju­nior team event al­so con­cludes Wednes­day with host Ja­maica fac­ing last year’s run­ner-up Guade­loupe.

On Mon­day, in the open­ing match, Ja­maica edged Bar­ba­dos 3-2, while last night (Tues­day), the Bar­ba­di­ans came up against Guade­loupe.

T&T won the ju­nior team ti­tle last year, beat­ing Guade­loupe in the fi­nal, but did not sub­mit a team this time around.

How­ev­er, a con­tin­gent of lo­cal play­ers will com­pete in the ju­nior in­di­vid­ual events.

Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the team events on Wednes­day (Au­gust 12), there will be runs si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the se­nior in­di­vid­ual events from Fri­day (Au­gust 14) to Tues­day, Au­gust 18.

No­table ab­sen­tees from the na­tion­al team are re­cent Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games par­tic­i­pant Re­ece Mar­cano, along with Will Lee due to pri­or com­mit­ments, while Vishal Ram­sub­hag, the sec­ond-ranked na­tion­al play­er, was a sur­pris­ing non-se­lec­tion for the na­tion­al team.