Teague Mar­cano fired in six goals and goal­keep­er An­drey Rocke kept a clean sheet to lift T&T to its first win and sealed the sev­enth spot in the men’s hock­ey com­pe­ti­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile on Fri­day.

The “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” beat Pe­ru 10-0 in their one-sided sev­enth and eighth clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­off in the first match of the day at the Hock­ey Sports Cen­tre.

“I’m very hap­py with the per­for­mance,” said the top scor­er. “Each game in the tour­na­ment we got bet­ter and bet­ter each match that we played. I think the team grew clos­er to­geth­er and we al­so grew in con­fi­dence and we showed it on the field to­day by scor­ing a lot of goals.”

It was an­oth­er sun­ny day, no, it was like­ly the hottest morn­ing in San­ti­a­go and it seemed to favour the T&T side, par­tic­u­lar­ly Mar­cano, who ini­ti­at­ed the at­tack as ear­ly as the third minute but his open­ing at­tempt was saved by Pe­ru goal­keep­er Diego Chipana.

He came again a minute lat­er but couldn’t breach the Pe­ru­vian cus­to­di­an, nei­ther could his team­mate Joel Daniel in the fifth.

Daniel’s strike mo­ments lat­er though, sig­nalled to the DJ to again play Machel Mon­tano and De­stra Gar­cia’s 2023 con­tri­bu­tion “Shake The Place” as has been done all tour­na­ment when T&T scored. Ac­tu­al­ly, clear­ly, the DJ did more re­search on T&T’s so­ca hits as to­day, Kes’ re­lease Sa­van­nah Grass was added to the line-up. Ei­ther tune is pumped through the speak­ers at the Hock­ey Cen­tre in cel­e­bra­tion of T&T’s re­spec­tive goals.

Daniel def­i­nite­ly shook the net with a field goal to score T&T’s open­ing item in the sixth minute. The T&T team, coached by for­mer na­tion­al men’s cap­tain Dar­ren Cowie, con­tin­ued on an at­tack­ing note and earned the first penal­ty cor­ner of the match in the sev­enth but Ethan Reynos missed the tar­get. T&T did not have to wait long for their sec­ond item as Mar­cano con­vert­ed an eighth-minute penal­ty cor­ner to put his team up, 2-0, be­fore find­ing the back of the net again off an­oth­er penal­ty cor­ner in the 11th minute. Tariq Mar­cano al­so put his name on the score­sheet to push T&T fur­ther ahead, 4-0 to close the first quar­ter.

The lo­cal “Stick­men” kept up the tem­po and scored two more goals in the next pe­ri­od, thanks to both Mar­canos, who dou­bled up with Teague scor­ing a field goal in the 19th and Tariq con­vert­ed a penal­ty in the 25th to take T&T to a 6-0 lead.

Dar­win Chavez al­most pulled a goal back for Pe­ru in the fi­nal minute of the first half but Rocke came to the res­cue.

“It was a good re­sult, be­cause first quar­ter and sec­ond quar­ter we stuck to plan, had a lot of dis­ci­pline in the game, and in­struc­tions were there, I can’t re­mem­ber Pe­ru get­ting in­to our ‘V’ once un­til the last ten sec­onds of the sec­ond quar­ter where they got a chance at goal and Rocke had to be sharp to make that save,” said Cowie.

On the re­sump­tion, T&T restart­ed at the same pace but Pe­ru did a good job re­strict­ing them. That was un­til Teague scored back-to-back field goals in the 43rd minute to push T&T to an 8-0 lead.

“Again, it speaks to a lot of con­sis­ten­cy and dis­ci­pline that we lacked then that kind of set the tone for the third quar­ter where we didn’t re­al­ly start that well,” said Cowie. “In­to the fourth quar­ter, we lost a lot of shape, we lost a lot of dis­ci­pline but still a lot of in­di­vid­ual play did give us that big, hefty score­line so I don’t want to take away from the fact that the guys did come out and play as hard as pos­si­ble but we have to come to a point where we can con­sis­tent­ly put to­geth­er 60-minute match­es.”

T&T hock­ey men were slow to get off again in the fi­nal quar­ter as they searched for more goals but Pe­ru, with sup­port from their vo­cal fans, re­sist­ed. How­ev­er, there was no stop­ping Teague and no breach­ing sol­id Rocke in the goal.

T&T cre­at­ed back-to-back penal­ty cor­ner chances in quick time. The first tak­en by Tariq was off tar­get but the oth­er led to Shawn Phillip’s div­ing fin­ish to put T&T up 9-0. Five min­utes lat­er, Teague net­ted his sixth and T&T’s tenth item of the lop­sided match.

“It has been a lot of ups and downs in terms of we ex­pect­ed some vic­to­ries and not get­ting them but over­all I’m quite hap­py with the per­for­mance we had out here es­pe­cial­ly see­ing that we had a lot of ju­nior play­ers like a lot of play­ers, this is their first Pan Am Games and it is one of the big­ger Games we go to so play­ers tend to get ner­vous in front of a big crowd, the weath­er is a lit­tle bit cold so all these lit­tle fac­tors could con­tribute to why we weren’t get­ting some of those vic­to­ries but nev­er­the­less we are hap­py with the per­for­mance.”

It was T&T’s first win in five match­es. The “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” last­ed all three group stage match­es against the USA (6-1), Brazil (2-1), and Cana­da (4-0) then was beat­en in round one of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­offs by Mex­i­co 2-0 in a penal­ty shootout af­ter the scores were tied, 3-3, at the end of reg­u­la­tion time.

“I hate to al­ways say, as a play­er and a cap­tain I use to say this a lot, we have a young side we are re­build­ing, it’s a good ex­pe­ri­ence for them, but at some point, in time we need to turn that page and have that con­sis­ten­cy in our na­tion­al team pro­gramme so I will have to sum it up as a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause we don’t get that ex­pe­ri­ence,” said Cowie who recog­nised the ef­fort of T&T’s cus­to­di­an as his ca­reer nears an end.

“This is An­drey Rocke’s last in­ter­na­tion­al 11s game, our goal­keep­er. He has been a long-stand­ing ser­vant to the sport in in­door. He still has his last hock­ey5 World Cup. We wish him the best,” said Cowie on Rocke’s clean sheet. “It was good to see him go out with a shutout to­day. We thought he wouldn’t have got­ten test­ed in a match like this but he still was up to the task.”

The “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women” showed up to give sup­port to the men’s team. They, too, will be in the same po­si­tion on Sat­ur­day, aim­ing to fol­low suit the men's team and take the sev­enth spot over Mex­i­co. The teams meet to­day at 8.30 a.m. T&T time.

Richards Jr stay

30th af­ter day two

T&T golfer Chris Richards Jr re­mains in last place af­ter round two in the men’s in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion at the Prince of Wales Coun­try Club, yes­ter­day.

He shot a bet­ter round 4-over 76 to be tied for 28th place with Brazil­ian An­drey Borges on day two, to to­tal 13-over 159 for 36 holed to stay in 30th place.

Se­bas­t­ian Munoz of Colom­bia moved in­to first place, to­talling 12-un­der 132 (66,66) for 36 holes with a two-shot lead over Eti­enne Pa­p­ineau of Cana­da, the first-round leader, with 134 (63,71). Mex­i­can duo Car­los Or­tiz (71, 64) and Abra­ham An­cer (68,67) are tied for third with 135.

Robin­son races in the B fi­nal

Nicholas Robin­son will be back in ac­tion to­day, to con­test the B fi­nal in the men’s in­di­vid­ual kayak sprint (K1) 1,000 me­tres event at La­gu­na Grande San Pe­dro de la Paz, yes­ter­day.

Robin­son will race out of lane sev­en against Jose Jimenez of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Es­teven Hilda­go of Pe­ru, Puer­to Ri­can Ed­dy Bar­ran­co, Miguel Va­len­cia of Chile, Be­lize’s Ama­do Cruz, and Venezue­lan Ray Acu­na.