sto­ries by NIGEL SI­MON

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

T&T men’s wa­ter po­lo team end­ed their cam­paign at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games qual­i­fiers with back-to-back wins at the Pisci­nas Olímpi­cas Her­nan­do Botero O Byrne, in Cali, Colom­bia.

On Sat­ur­day night, Kelvin Cae­sar was named ‘Play­er-of-the-Match’ af­ter scor­ing five goals in help­ing T&T earn their first win in the men’s com­pe­ti­tion, 32-11 over Pana­ma af­ter four straight de­feats.

Je­re­mi­ah Hen­riques-Brown was the top scor­er for the T&T men with six goals, while Lan­don Mauge al­so tal­lied five as they raced in­to a 9-5 lead at the end of the first quar­ter, which they ex­tend­ed to 15-9 by the half­time in­ter­val.

The trio of Mar­vin Guil­lard, Ethan El­liot and Marc-An­tho­ny Hinds reg­is­tered three goals for T&T, who upped the tem­po in the third pe­ri­od to outscore the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans 10-3, which pushed the lead to 25-12 be­fore an­oth­er dom­i­nant fi­nal pe­ri­od.

A score of 7-1 com­plet­ed the lop­sided vic­to­ry for T&T, their first in sev­en match­es.

T&T al­so got a pair of goals from Evan Guil­lard-Bruce and Ser­gio Des Vi­gnes, while the trio of Gre­go­rio Fe­li­cien, Akheem Valen­tine and Tyrece Joseph chipped in with one each.

For Pana­ma, Cris­t­ian Baez scored six goals while An­dres Beck­er added three, An­tho­ny Munoz two, and Ed­win Chen and Ce­sar Var­gas one each in the loss.

And yes­ter­day, the T&T men pow­ered past Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic 22-9, led by Hen­riques-Brown with five goals, while Mauge and El­liot added four goals each.
Gillard-Bruce helped him­self to three goals, with Guil­lard, Joseph and Cae­sar adding a pair of goals each.

John Burke had a team-high five goals for the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, while Fed­eri­co Cuif­fa added two, and Al­fred Jose and Fran­cis Cordero, the oth­ers.

In their pre­vi­ous match­es, T&T was out­classed by Cu­ba 10-23, Cos­ta Ri­ca 13-20, Colom­bia 4-27, and Mex­i­co 4-28.

The top six teams qual­i­fy­ing for the CAC Games were Colom­bia, Puer­to Ri­co, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mex­i­co and Cos­ta Ri­ca, while the quin­tet of Cu­ba, El Sal­vador, T&T, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Pana­ma missed out.

And in the eight-team women’s com­pe­ti­tion, T&T was out­played by Cos­ta Ri­ca 8-15 with Lexsy Del­ga­do net­ting five goals and the trio of Eilyn Eli­zon­do, cap­tain Denisse Chaves and Melany Mon­toya scor­ing three goals each for the win­ners, with Maria Car­va­jal the oth­er.

Di­ana Al­varez-Per­al­ta had a game-high three goals in the loss for the T&T  women, who trailed 0-2, 3-8, and 6-13 at the end of the first three quar­ters,  with Mia Thomas net­ting twice, and Anisa Row­ley, Khiara Ben­jamin-Roach, and Leah Dos San­tos, the oth­er.

In their oth­er match­es, T&T was de­feat­ed by Guatemala 9-24, Venezuela 5-22, Mex­i­co 4-32, Puer­to Ri­co 4-24, and Venezuela 11-24.