T&T’s hock­ey men missed out on a gold medal in the fi­nal at the Par­que del Este when they went down to Mex­i­co 5-1. The re­sult, how­ev­er, en­sured that they took the sil­ver medal when ac­tion in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Caribbean (CAC) Games con­tin­ued yes­ter­day.

Af­ter los­ing just once to Cu­ba 6-3 in the lead-up to the fi­nal at the same venue last week, the T&T men, who just a month ago earned a qual­i­fy­ing berth in the 2024 Oman World Cup fol­low­ing their suc­cess­ful dis­play at the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey5s Qual­i­fiers in Kingston, Ja­maica in June, were not at their best in the en­counter.

Alexan­der San­doval spear­head­ed the Mex­i­can vic­to­ry with a dou­ble strike, com­ing from the out­field, while Er­ick Her­nan­dez, Luis Vil­le­gas and An­dre Benedith got the oth­er goals. The lone item for the T&T team, not sur­pris­ing­ly, came from Akim Tou­s­saint.

Ca­lyp­so Girls get three wins in a row

Goal Shoot Joelisa Coop­er had a per­fect 100 per cent record of 20 goals from as many at­tempts to lead T&T to an em­phat­ic 60-30 vic­to­ry over St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in a Group A en­counter on Wednes­day evening.

The vic­to­ry was the third for the “Ca­lyp­so Girls” who de­feat­ed Bar­ba­dos 50-47 on Wednes­day morn­ing and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 108-10 in their open­ing match.

Play­ing at the Gim­na­sio Na­cional José Adol­fo Pine­da, Coop­er com­bined with the in-form Afeisha Noel, who net­ted 25 goals from 31 tries, Shaniya Mor­gan (4/5) and Tian­na Dil­lon 11/17 in tak­ing the ear­ly ad­van­tage from the first quar­ter 15-5 and lead­ing straight to vic­to­ry 26-16 in the sec­ond ses­sion and 44-23 in the third quar­ter.

Last night, the lo­cal net­ballers were sched­uled to meet the Cay­man Is­lands and to­day will face off against fel­low un­beat­en team Ja­maica.

Craw­ford, James fail in men’s dis­cus

The pair of Christo­pher Craw­ford and Jaden James failed to be among the medals in the fi­nals of the men’s dis­cus at the Es­ta­dio Na­cional Jorge El Mági­co González on Wednes­day night.

Craw­ford was clos­er to a podi­um fin­ish for T&T with a dis­tance of 58.66 me­tres which land­ed him the fourth-place po­si­tion in the com­pet­i­tive field. How­ev­er, Jaden James, the oth­er TT ath­lete, was dead-last with a non-com­pet­i­tive dis­tance of 49.90 me­tres.

That event was won by Cu­ba’s Mario Di­az who pro­duced a 62.57 me­tres dis­tance for the gold medal with the sil­ver and bronze medals go­ing to Mauri­cio Or­te­ga of Colom­bia (61.67) and Jorge Fer­nan­dez of Cu­ba (59.97 me­tres), re­spec­tive­ly.

T&T fall to Cu­ba in straight sets

T&T was de­feat­ed by Cu­ba 3-0 (25-16, 25-17, 25-17) in their Pool B match of the Women’s Vol­ley­ball tour­na­ment.

Cu­ba (2-1) is one step clos­er to reach­ing the semi­fi­nals, they have to wait for the re­sult be­tween Colom­bia (2-0) and El Sal­vador (1-1). T&T ends Pool B in fourth place and will play the clas­si­fi­ca­tion round for po­si­tions 5 to 8.

With a con­sid­er­able im­prove­ment from their pre­vi­ous per­for­mances, T&T was able to keep the score close to halfway in all three sets.

Cu­ba was su­pe­ri­or in at­tack­ing points by far (48-23), while fin­ish­ing with slight ad­van­tages in blocks (6-5) and points from serves (4-3). T&T com­mit­ted few­er er­rors (17-19).

Cuban op­po­site Yen­sy Kinde­lan, out­side hit­ter Di­aris Pérez and mid­dle block­er Jes­si­ca Aguil­era scored 10 points each for their teams’ vic­to­ry.

Chan­non Thomp­son of T&T led all scor­ers col­lect­ing 11 points (8 kills, 3 blocks).

Yen­sy Kinde­lan, Top scor­er of Cu­ba: “I con­sid­er it was most­ly er­rors on our side which kept the scores close; we com­mit­ted 6 to 7 er­rors per set, that was the dif­fi­cul­ty be­cause af­ter each er­ror came con­sec­u­tive points from their side. We ad­just­ed and it will be hard­er in the next round be­cause the op­po­nent will be su­pe­ri­or, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic or Puer­to Ri­co”.

Tomás Fer­nán­dez Artea­ga, Head Coach of Cu­ba: “My team was over­con­fi­dent. Ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers per­formed at our op­po­nents’ lev­el of play, and we com­mit­ted un­forced er­rors, which de­pend­ed on our side. For me, the next match is a tran­si­tion to move in­to the bronze medal match be­cause I be­lieve we will face Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, the best team in the com­pe­ti­tion”.

Thomp­son, top scor­er of T&T: “Our team had a con­sid­er­able im­prove­ment. Now, we are in a process of de­vel­op­ment, re­build­ing, af­ter we qual­i­fied to the World Cham­pi­onship in 2018, un­for­tu­nate­ly the con­ti­nu­ity of the pro­gram broke. It’s go­ing to take some time, it’s go­ing to take los­ing many games, but in los­ing we can eval­u­ate and go back to the draw­ing board and learn to play bet­ter”.

Stew­art cops ‘Best Scor­er’ CAC Games vball award

USA-based T&T vol­ley­baller Daynte Stew­art was named the “Best Scor­er” in the Men’s In­door Vol­ley­ball Tour­na­ment at the 24th edi­tion of the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games at the Sports Palace Car­los El Famoso Hernán­dez, San Sal­vador 2023 on Sun­day.

Stew­art end­ed with 76 points in five match­es, one more than Guatemala’s Car­los Lopez, to se­cure the award but it was not enough to help T&T avoid a cel­lar-placed fin­ish in the eight-team tour­na­ment af­ter an 18-21, 18-25, 25-21, 24-26 loss to de­fend­ing Caribbean cham­pi­ons Suri­name in their sev­enth-place play­off on Sun­day.

The out­stand­ing dis­play in de­fence of Cuban Yon­der Gar­cía was recog­nised as he was named the Most Valu­able Play­er (MVP) as his team won the ti­tle cour­tesy of a 25-17, 25-17, 25-22 de­feat of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in the gold medal match.

 Cu­ba, in ad­di­tion to the MVP recog­ni­tion, dom­i­nat­ed four of the 12 in­di­vid­ual awards to take back home the fol­low­ing dis­tinc­tions: “First Best Block­er’ for José Mas­so, “Best Set­ter” for Ly­van Taboa­da, and “Best Serv­er” for Javier Con­cep­ción.

 Mex­i­co, al­so stood out with three in­di­vid­ual awards, with Jo­sué López as “Sec­ond Best Spik­er” and Hi­ram Bra­vo as “Best Libero” and “Best De­fend­er”. Puer­to Ri­co was grant­ed the awards of “First Best Spik­er” for Pele­grin Var­gas and ‘Best Re­ceiv­er’ for Den­nis Del Valle, and the awards for “Sec­ond Best Block­er”, and “Best Op­po­site” went to Rafael Bru­gos and Hen­ry Tapia of Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic re­spec­tive­ly.