Clay­ton Clarke

Hosts To­ba­go were go­ing for their sec­ond win in To­ba­go Net­ball League 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions Un­der-23 Quad­ran­gu­lar Se­ries but fell to Grena­da 36-34 on the sec­ond day of play at the Shaw Park Courts on Fri­day.

Af­ter whip­ping Guyana on the open­ing day on Thurs­day by 46-11, the Kem­ba Dun­can coached out­fit could not hold their nerves in the fi­nal quar­ter as Grena­da came back from be­ing 16-9 down in the sec­ond quar­ter to edge the To­bag­o­ni­ans.

To­ba­go held the lead well in­to the fi­nal quar­ter and were up 28-27 be­fore the Grenadines lev­eled the scores.

Both sides trad­ed goals through­out the pe­ri­od and it the "Spice girls" show­ing their ex­pe­ri­ence with ex­cel­lent ball con­trol and ac­cu­rate pass­ing to fi­nal­ly pulled away for the vic­to­ry af­ter the squads were locked at 34-34.

Goal-shoot­er Tiffany Fredrick scored sev­er­al goals from long range to silent the home fans. To­ba­go's goal keep­er Ar­resia Sandy had a great game mak­ing sev­er­al steals and forc­ing turnovers.

To­ba­go led at the end of the first three quar­ters 9-6, 16-13, 26-24.

For the win­ner, Fredrick end­ed with 20 goals from 36 at­tempts and Brit­ney Jones con­tribut­ing 16 off 26 tries. Lennecia McKel­lar led the scor­ing for To­ba­go with 20 out of 27 while Natasha Radg­man (11/21) and Naki­ta Spencer (3/4) were the oth­er scor­ers.

In the ear­li­er game St Vin­cent and the Grenadines ham­mered Guyana 61-11 to record their sec­ond win of the tour­na­ment. Shal­lisa Davis led the way with 50 from 72 and was as­sist­ed by Shan­ice Daniel (9/13) and Shanique Deshong (2/4).

For Guyana, Si­mon­i­ca Fan­fair (5/14) and Sha­nee Sub­art­tie (6/11) were the scor­ers.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines beat Grena­da 33-27 on Thurs­day and was sched­uled to play To­ba­go in the sec­ond game last evening. Guyana were seek­ing their first win against Grena­da in the ear­li­er game which be­gan at 6.45 pm.

The tour­na­ment is host­ed by the To­ba­go Net­ball League (TNL) in cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th an­niver­sary of the league. Pres­i­dent of the league Martha Archer said the aim of the se­ries is pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure for the To­ba­go play­ers.

"They had the lead but could not keep it. Many of the Grena­da mem­bers play on their se­nior team and that made a dif­fer­ence on the court," said the for­mer head of the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA). "It could not have been bet­ter for them. It is part of de­vel­op­ment. Many were cry­ing af­ter the de­feat. We hope for good show­ing against St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to­mor­row (to­day)."