Na­tion­al se­nior women’s net­ball team head coach Liselle John­son has is­sued a di­rect ap­peal for na­tion­al sup­port fol­low­ing the “Ca­lyp­so Girls” gold-medal suc­cess at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic last Fri­day.

​“Com­ing out of this, I do hope that Trinidad and To­ba­go can re­gain some con­fi­dence in the sport, and we get the re­spect that the sport de­serves through­out the coun­try,” John­son said. “And hope­ful­ly cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go can buy in­to the team to help us, be­cause there are some things that the team needs that can­not al­ways be pro­vid­ed.”

​John­son was do­ing more than cel­e­brat­ing an un­beat­en tour­na­ment cam­paign; she was mak­ing a strong case for the back­ing her play­ers de­serve. Fresh off a flaw­less sweep, the na­tion­al coach is de­ter­mined not to let her squad’s his­toric tri­umph be­come a pass­ing mo­ment. In­stead, she is con­vert­ing their dom­i­nance on the court in­to a clear call for cor­po­rate T&T to in­vest in the team’s fu­ture.

​The “Ca­lyp­so Girls”, cap­tained by Kali­fa Mc­Collin, dom­i­nat­ed the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion, fin­ish­ing at the top of the six-team ta­ble with a max­i­mum ten points. T&T dis­man­tled the op­po­si­tion one by one, dom­i­nat­ing St Lu­cia (52-25), Bar­ba­dos (61-39), the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (86-6), and Bermu­da (76-28), be­fore seal­ing their gold­en sta­tus with a 56-49 tri­umph over re­gion­al pow­er­house Ja­maica.

​Re­flect­ing on the vir­tu­al fi­nal against the Sun­shine Girls, John­son not­ed the in­tense fo­cus re­quired to reach the top of the podi­um.

​“Go­ing in­to the gold medal game against the Sun­shine Girls, the aim was to keep our score on top of theirs through­out the en­tire pe­ri­od of the game, to have the goal ad­van­tage against them,” John­son said. “In the game it­self, I know at first the team was a bit anx­ious, be­cause we know the po­ten­tial of this Ja­maican team, and we can­not un­der­es­ti­mate any op­po­nents that we come up against. So, the team was on high, but at the same time a bit anx­ious. Through­out the game, I had to con­stant­ly re­mind them that we have this... and I al­so had the sup­port of the cap­tain. And she did an ex­cel­lent job in bol­ster­ing the team to­geth­er.”

​John­son al­so firm­ly shut down at­tempts to min­imise the mag­ni­tude of the vic­to­ry when it was sug­gest­ed that Ja­maica had fea­tured a weak­er, younger de­vel­op­ment side by field­ing main­ly un­der 21 play­ers, while Ja­maica’s se­nior team won the sil­ver medal at the Com­mon­wealth Games, a week ear­li­er in Glas­gow, Scot­land.

​“I would cor­rect the nar­ra­tive of them hav­ing a younger team,” John­son stat­ed as­sertive­ly. “This team is their se­nior team. They have play­ers that are ac­tu­al­ly, that have ac­tu­al­ly played in the Eng­lish League and so forth. So, I would say prob­a­bly the old­est per­son would have been a num­ber 27, 28, some­where there. Where­as, on our team, we had play­ers that were 21, 22. So, in com­par­i­son, it doesn’t match up as younger. I would say, how­ev­er, that the team that was sent was an ex­pe­ri­enced team, one that could play be­cause they played well, they played ex­cel­lent. But we just had the abil­i­ty to just go a notch above.”

​Now, the fo­cus piv­ots di­rect­ly to the Amer­i­c­as World Cup Qual­i­fiers, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 16-26 in Bar­ba­dos. Be­cause of the over­lap­ping in­ter­na­tion­al sched­ule, with the Com­mon­wealth Games run­ning from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 2 and the CAC Games span­ning Ju­ly 24 to Au­gust 8, the na­tion­al pool had pre­vi­ous­ly been split in­to two dis­tinct squads to ful­fill both com­mit­ments. Re­join­ing those pieces in­to a sin­gle, co­he­sive unit will be­gin in earnest dur­ing the week of Au­gust 24, and John­son warns it will be a dif­fi­cult path for­ward.

​“Go­ing in­to the World Cup Qual­i­fiers, we have to pull to­geth­er back the two teams and de­cide with­in the com­po­nents of the Com­mon­wealth team and the CAC team the per­sons that will be go­ing for­ward for pos­si­ble se­lec­tion for that tour­na­ment,” John­son ex­plained. “It’s go­ing to be a gru­elling process. As you know, we do have a wealth of tal­ent in net­ball, but we can on­ly pick 12 to 15 play­ers.”

​With se­lec­tion nar­row­ing and the clock tick­ing to­ward Oc­to­ber, John­son knows the mar­gin for er­ror is non-ex­is­tent.

​“It’s go­ing to be a task at hand to be able to se­lect the best out of that group­ing in or­der for us to main­tain the sta­tus that we have just cre­at­ed in the world and in the Caribbean of be­ing Trinidad (& To­ba­go) and main­tain­ing this gold,” John­son said. “To be able to en­ter in­to that tour­na­ment on a high with an­oth­er com­pet­i­tive team, a win­ning team, a team that un­der­stands the task at hand and is de­ter­mined to see it through.”