T&T women’s team failure to qualify as one of the three teams from the Hockey 5s Pan American Cup after a fourth-place finish at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus turf in Kingston, Jamaica on Sunday night is being blamed on missed opportunities.
This according to coach Glen “Fido” Francis after his team led by co-captains Krizia Layne-Alexander, and Shaniah De Freitas was blanked 2-0 in the must-win third place playoff by Paraguay at the Mona campus Turf, Kingston, with the latter joining champions USA and runner-up Uruguay as the three qualifiers to the 16-nation Women’s World Cup where they will join the African trio of Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia along with host Oman as qualifiers with Oceania, Asia, and Europe yet to determine their three qualifiers each as well.
Reflecting on his team’s performance at the nine-team women’s tournament former national goalkeeper Francis said, “We had a pretty good start against Jamaica and won 2-1 before losing 8-1 to Uruguay followed by a 2-2 draw with Brazil, and I still wasn’t pleased with the girls.
“But we started to get our game together when we played Guatemala and we won 8-0 in the quarterfinals and then we played USA in the semifinals (2-1 loss) which I think was one of our best games as the girls really did everything that was expected of them from the coach, but we still came up short by not scoring our opportunities.
Francis added, “That’s how sports is, we were unlucky, and we had the bronze medal to play for and one more bite at the cherry for the World Cup, but we didn’t play how we were expected to play and definitely the result didn’t go how it was supposed to for us as we loss 2-0 against Paraguay.”
Looking back on the bronze medal defeat, Francis said, “I think the girls were very flat in that game and we still weren’t scoring our opportunities and our fitness had a big part to play as well."
Going forward, Francis said the team has the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games in about two weeks' time and it’s going to be pretty tough for them, but they are going to try their best to do good.
Layne-Alexander added, “Obviously it’s not the result we wanted as we thought we would have gotten the third-place medal, but sometimes this is how sport goes.
“I think in some areas we were lacking just that finishing touch and also in fitness, but I think that the girls did perform pretty well especially against one of the stronger teams against USA, who eventually won the tournament.
"We had a really good performance against the USA in the semifinals, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to carry that through to the third-place match, but like I said that’s how it goes sometimes. At the same time, I’m really proud of the boys, and of course we now have the CAC Games to look forward too and hopefully Pan Am coming up, so we just have to try and refocus and prepare for that."
