Rachael Thomp­son-King

The Jean Pierre Chal­lenge tro­phy is now in the pos­ses­sion of Po­lice af­ter it de­feat­ed Fire 45-36 in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion of the Courts All Sec­tor Net­ball League at the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Tacarigua on Thurs­day evening. It was the Patrice Ed­wards show as the goal-at­tack was un­stop­pable in the cir­cle, lead­ing all shoot­ers with 35 tries off 47 at­tempts. Fire un­der the guid­ance of ju­nior na­tion­al net­ball cap­tain Joelisa Coop­er made a good start, tak­ing com­mand of the first pe­ri­od with a 12-9 ad­van­tage.

The po­lice of­fi­cers fought back though and at the half, were able to gar­ner a three-goal (23-20) lead. Play re­mained in­tense in­to the third ses­sion but Fire still trailed by two (31-29) goals head­ing in­to the fi­nal quar­ter. It was a whole new ball game in the fourth pe­ri­od and Po­lice stepped up its at­tack and man­aged to outscore the fire­women 14-7, to win by the nine-goal mar­gin.

Pre­vi­ous cham­pi­on De­fence Force got no sym­pa­thy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) as it was clob­bered 80-20 in the evening's sec­ond match.

UTT took full ad­van­tage of the army/coast­guard unit which had on­ly five play­ers tak­ing the court to con­test for the third spot. Goal-shoot­er Anas­ta­sia Wil­son was a shad­ow of her­self as she was held to on­ly 15 at­tempts of which she net­ted 10. The short-hand­ed De­fence Force team was clue­less as to how to stop ju­nior na­tion­al shoot­er Saman­tha Wal­lace, who con­nect­ed a sea­son-high 60 off 69.

UTT led from the first pass with the quar­ter scores read­ing 28-5, 42-13 and 58-15, to seal its sole vic­to­ry in the memo­r­i­al com­pe­ti­tion and fin­ish in third place.

Re­sults

Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion

JEAN PIERRE CHAL­LENGE

Po­lice�45 (Shiv­aughn Skeete 5/11, Patrice Ed­wards 35/47, Eu­phemia Hug­gins�5/14) vs Fire 36 (Si­mone Mor­gan 14/23, Joelisa Coop­er 22/30). Quar­ter scores: 12-9 Fire, 23-20 Po­lice, 31-29 Po­lice.

UTT�80 (Saman­tha Wal­lace 60/69, Jil­lisa Al­lan 20/36) vs De­fence Force� 20 (Anas­ta­sia Wil­son 10/15, Car­lette Nurse�4/12, Ki­maria James�6/10). Quar­ter scores: 28-5 UTT, 42-13 UTT, 58-15 UTT.