T&T’s prepa­ra­tions for up­com­ing Olympic Qual­i­fiers is com­ing along and is ex­pect­ed to be boost­ed by the in­clud­ing of some past na­tion­al play­ers as well as re­cruits dis­cov­ered by two Com­bined held in North Amer­i­ca over the past two weeks.

This is the up­date com­ing from the head of the Na­tion­al Women’s pro­gramme Stephan De Four, who is cur­rent­ly over­see­ing the prepa­ra­tion of the Women’s Olympic team for qual­i­fiers which will be host­ed in T&T in Sep­tem­ber as well as the Un­der-20 and Un­der-17 Women’s qual­i­fiers lat­er in the year.

Com­bines for North Amer­i­can-based play­ers were staged in At­lanta and South Flori­da in the Unit­ed States last week and an­oth­er was held in New York a few days ear­li­er.

“The Com­bines in New York and Flori­da turned out well with some good num­bers turn­ing out. The one in At­lanta wasn’t great in terms of the turnout but we were still able to dis­cov­er some tal­ent there. Over­all, I would say it was a suc­cess­ful ven­ture with these com­bines in the three lo­ca­tions be­cause we have dis­cov­ered some ca­pa­ble play­ers in all age groups who are all com­mit­ted and ea­ger about rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go,” De­four told TTFA Me­dia.

“The im­por­tant thing for us was find­ing new play­ers and es­tab­lish­ing a con­nec­tion with them as they are all com­ing in with a good back­ground hav­ing been en­rolled in women’s soc­cer pro­grammes in North Amer­i­ca which means they have a good un­der­stand­ing of the game and have al­ready been ex­posed to some lev­el of train­ing and de­vel­op­ment. We will con­tin­ue to be in touch with these play­ers with the idea of hav­ing the cho­sen ones come over to join the lo­cal group in prepa­ra­tions for the com­pe­ti­tions we have com­ing up,” De­four added.

Re­gard­ing the up­com­ing Olympic qual­i­fiers, De­four al­so com­menced screen­ing for home-based play­ers and is con­tin­u­ing the process to­wards se­lect­ing a Women’s Team that will in­clude se­nior play­ers.

“The screen­ing for Olympic team se­lec­tion is on­go­ing. We had a good turnout in the first set of ses­sions and there was a sol­id turn out of cur­rent na­tion­al play­ers, play­ers who have rep­re­sent­ed the na­tion­al women’s pro­gramme in the past as well as play­ers cur­rent­ly in­volved in the Women’s League (WOLF). I can tell you that we will have play­ers in­volved who have played in the past but were not in­volved in re­cent cam­paigns. We are try­ing to se­lect the best pos­si­ble na­tion­al teams to rep­re­sent the coun­try,” said De­four.

T&T will host the Caribbean Group for the Olympic qual­i­fiers from Sep­tem­ber 30th to Oc­to­ber 8th. The oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing teams in the group in­clude Aru­ba, An­tigua/Bar­bu­da, St Kitts/Nevis, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Guyana. On­ly the Group win­ner will ad­vance to the Fi­nal Con­ca­caf round where they will join the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co along with two oth­er Caribbean group stage win­ners and two teams from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. From that fi­nal round, the top two teams will ad­vance to the 2020 Sum­mer Olympics Women’s foot­ball tour­na­ment in Japan.