T&T fin­ished in third place in both the women’s and men’s di­vi­sions of the Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North (RAN) Sev­ens tour­na­ment at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

​On the fi­nal day of the three-day con­test on Sun­day, the T&T women’s team de­feat­ed Bermu­da 27-0, while their male coun­ter­parts al­so tri­umphed over their Bermu­dan ri­vals 29-5. The lo­cal play­ers were the on­ly coun­try to win medals in both cat­e­gories.

​Cap­tain of T&T’s women’s team, Leah Kin­ti­ba, was elat­ed with the top-three fin­ish, say­ing, “We are ex­treme­ly proud of our­selves. Yes, we un­der­stand that it is not the re­sult that we want­ed, but earn­ing bronze on home soil is a big achieve­ment. It re­flects the hard work, dis­ci­pline, and com­mit­ment we as a team put in through­out the tour­na­ment. It al­so shows that we are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion.”

Kin­ti­ba told Guardian Me­dia Sports that her team­mates were go­ing for gold.

“Our goal is al­ways to aim for the top. We came in­to the tour­na­ment want­i­ng to con­test the gold, but we al­so un­der­stood the lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion we would be fac­ing. Fin­ish­ing third was not our ide­al tar­get, but it is a re­sult we ac­cept with pride and mo­ti­va­tion to push even fur­ther.”

​The St James res­i­dent as­sessed the squad’s progress dur­ing the tour­na­ment.

“In the round-robin stage, we start­ed very strong, win­ning our first two games on day one and show­ing great struc­ture and con­fi­dence. When we moved in­to Day Two and faced our ri­val teams, Mex­i­co and Ja­maica, we fell short in a few key mo­ments that cost us the re­sults we want­ed. How­ev­er, those match­es gave us valu­able lessons and high­light­ed ex­act­ly where we need to sharp­en our ex­e­cu­tion. By the time we reached the bronze medal match, the play­ers re­grouped, re­fo­cused, and showed the re­silience need­ed to fin­ish the tour­na­ment on a high.”

​She praised the ef­forts of the ju­nior mem­bers of the line-up. “Fields, Burke and John, be­ing the young ones on the team, stepped up when the team need­ed them the most and played with heart. We, the se­nior play­ers and the coach­es, are re­al­ly proud of them.”

​The skip­per was buoyed by the T&T fans.

“The home crowd was in­cred­i­ble. Their en­er­gy lift­ed us every time we stepped on the field. Hear­ing that sup­port be­hind us mo­ti­vat­ed us to push even hard­er, es­pe­cial­ly in tough mo­ments. It tru­ly felt like we had an ex­tra play­er on the field.”

Kin­ti­ba added, “It was def­i­nite­ly more of an ho­n­our than pres­sure. Of course, there are ex­pec­ta­tions when you play at home, but rep­re­sent­ing your coun­try in front of your own peo­ple is some­thing spe­cial. The play­ers em­braced it and used it as mo­ti­va­tion rather than stress.”

​Mean­while, the cap­tain of the lo­cal men’s out­fit, Sha­keel Dyte, al­so said the hun­dreds of lo­cal fans at the sta­di­um made a dif­fer­ence for the home play­ers. “(The sup­port was) very im­por­tant be­cause hear­ing that crowd be­hind us when we break the line, go­ing to score a try, it helps with the boost and the dri­ve that we need,” he said.

The 29-year-old was hope­ful T&T would have im­proved on the sil­ver won at the 2024 edi­tion of the tour­na­ment held at the same venue.

“We came sec­ond last year. This year we ex­pect­ed to re­peat the same re­sult or bet­ter it but un­for­tu­nate­ly it did not go that way. Noth­ing to be dis­ap­point­ed in. The boys worked hard. We did not get the re­sult that we want­ed but at the end of the day, it is a re­sult nonethe­less.”

The Har­vard play­er be­lieved that with more prepa­ra­tion, the team could have clinched the ti­tle.

“(With) some (more) dis­ci­pline through­out the cam­paign in terms of train­ing be­cause some guys are over­seas, oth­ers liv­ing in To­ba­go, so we were not able to train as a team as much as we would like to. We did get it to­geth­er in the end­ing, though, but I guess hav­ing that con­sis­ten­cy would have helped the over­all re­sults.”