T&T's ju­nior men's hock­ey team will re­turn home on Fri­day at 10.50 pm.

They re­turn af­ter a bat­tling but im­pres­sive dis­play at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship in Chile a week ago, but had lat­er been strand­ed at the UGO ho­tel in Chile af­ter their COVID-19 PCR tests were re­fused be­cause they were writ­ten in Span­ish.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the TTHB on Wednes­day, un­for­tu­nate­ly af­ter board­ing the flight, the T&T con­tin­gent were sub­se­quent­ly asked to dis­em­bark by air­line staff, who were in­formed by of­fi­cials in T&T that PCR test re­sults must be pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish, and not in Span­ish as they were all in pos­ses­sion of.

The ju­nior boys team along with coach Dar­ren Cowie, who al­so placed sixth in their FIH World Cup qual­i­fiers, and re­main­ing of­fi­cials were then due to ar­rive on Wednes­day af­ter be­ing sched­uled to de­part Chile on Tues­day night.

The dou­ble gen­der tour­na­ment was con­test­ed from Au­gust 21-28, but due to late trav­el arrange­ments made by the lo­cal board, the T&T ju­nior men and women teams on­ly ar­rived in Chile on Au­gust 20, and were forced to spend more than a week in Chile af­ter the con­clu­sion of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Yes­ter­day, a re­port stat­ed that the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) and the T&T Hock­ey Board (TTHB) were pleased to an­nounce that flight arrange­ments were made for the Ju­nior men’s team cur­rent­ly in Chile.

"The twen­ty-three (23) mem­ber con­tin­gent is sched­uled to de­part on Fri­day 10th, Sep­tem­ber 2021 at 5:43 a.m. via Co­pa Air­lines. They will then board BW 8001 de­part­ing Pana­ma at 6.50 pm ar­riv­ing in Pi­ar­co at 10.50 pm.

"All nec­es­sary arrange­ments have been made to en­sure that the re­quired doc­u­ments are made avail­able."

Speak­ing from Chile, man­ag­er of the men's Un­der-21 team Sharon de Fre­itas said, "I am re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to re­turn home and this ex­cite­ment can al­so be felt in the camp. This has been a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and I am hap­py know­ing that both the gov­ern­ment and the board are do­ing their best to en­sure we are com­fort­able here and re­turn home safe­ly."

Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe said “I have been fol­low­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties with in­ter­est and have tak­en ac­tion. It heart­ens me to see so many gov­ern­ment agen­cies come to­geth­er to en­sure our team is not just tak­en care of but can re­turn home safe­ly.”

Mean­while, SporTT and TTHB have ex­tend­ed sin­cere thanks to the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, the Em­bassy of Chile in T&T, the Em­bassy of T&T in Brazil, the Min­istry of Health and Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs for work­ing res­olute­ly to fa­cil­i­tate the team’s ac­com­mo­da­tion and trav­el arrange­ments.

Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho, chair­man of SporTT said: “While we are thank­ing these agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly Caribbean Air­lines, for the ex­cel­lent show­ing of part­ner­ship and cor­po­ra­tion, I would al­so like to thank the team and ac­com­pa­ny­ing of­fi­cials for their pa­tience in this mat­ter. We are work­ing for you.”