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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Marcano likes women’s hockey Pan Am draw

by

Nigel Simon
1373 days ago
20211021
T&T senior women’s hockey team coach, Anthony Marcano

T&T senior women’s hockey team coach, Anthony Marcano

Na­tion­al women’s hock­ey team coach An­tho­ny “Bumper” Mar­cano says he likes his team tough group as­sign­ment for next year’s Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Cup in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

On Tues­day, the “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women” were hand­ed a tough Pool A round-robin draw against the South Amer­i­can trio of the pow­er­house and three-time win­ners Ar­genti­na, Chile and Uruguay in the eight-team tour­na­ment which runs from Jan­u­ary 12-23 while Cana­da, Mex­i­co, USA and Pe­ru will face off in Pool B of the tour­na­ment which serves as the FIH World Cup qual­i­fiers for the re­gion.

The “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women” open their tour­na­ment ver­sus Chile on Jan­u­ary 12 from 7.30 pm fol­lowed by match­es against Uruguay on Jan­u­ary 14 from 5.15 pm, and Ar­genti­na, two days lat­er al­so from 5.15 pm to close out round-robin play.

The top team at the end of round-robin play will ad­vance to the main draw semi­fi­nals on Jan­u­ary 20 while the sec­ond and third-placed teams in each pool meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals.

Both fi­nal­ists and the third-place fin­ish­ers in the Pan Amer­i­can re­gion will earn places at the16-team FIH World Cup which will be host­ed joint­ly by Spain and Nether­lands in 2022.

Com­ment­ing on the draw, Mar­cano said he thinks it is a good one in that be­ing with the num­ber one team in the re­gion (Ar­genti­na), every­one has to play well.

He added, “It is al­ways bet­ter to be with Ar­genti­na as the cross-overs gives you a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty of suc­cess.

“All the teams here are ranked above us (T&T) and there­fore we will be look­ing at achiev­ing a top-six fin­ish.

“If we achieve this, it will al­low us to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fy for the next Pan Amer­i­can Cup,” ex­plained Mar­cano.

T&T on­ly ce­ment­ed its spot in Chile with a sec­ond-place fin­ish last month at the Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge be­hind host Pe­ru, led by head coach Mar­cano.

Dur­ing the one-week tour­na­ment, T&T de­feat­ed Pe­ru 1-0 in their open­ing round-robin en­counter on Sep­tem­ber 26, fol­lowed by a 2-2 draw with Paraguay on (Sep­tem­ber 28) and 1-1 with Brazil a day lat­er to end in the sec­ond spot at the end of group play with five points, one be­hind the Pe­ru­vians.

In the semi­fi­nal, T&T bat­tled past Paraguay 4-3 on sud­den-death penal­ty shoot-out af­ter a 1-1 draw in reg­u­la­tion time while Pe­ru blanked Brazil 2-0, be­fore aveng­ing their round-robin loss to the 'Ca­lyp­so Stick­women' for the gold medal, 2-0.

One mem­ber of the team from in Pe­ru, who will be un­avail­able is for­mer team cap­tain Tere­sa Leza­ma who called time on her na­tion­al ca­reer some two weeks ago and coach Mar­cano ad­mit­ted her ab­sence has left a gap in the team where ex­pe­ri­ence is con­cerned.

“How­ev­er, the women's pro­gramme we have been de­vel­op­ing play­ers to fill in the gaps that will be cre­at­ed by those ath­letes com­ing to the end of their ca­reers.

“Tere­sa was a stal­wart for T&T's women hock­ey, a very ded­i­cat­ed ath­lete and am­bas­sador of the sport.

“The re­spect she gained through her ca­reer from with­in the team and oth­ers por­tray her will­ing­ness to make every­one she comes in con­tact with bet­ter,” stat­ed Mar­cano.

The Ar­gen­tines are five-time Pan Amer­i­can Cup win­ners and the lone team to have ever won gold in the com­pe­ti­tion, while the USA has end­ed sec­ond in each edi­tion ex­cept 2017 when they took bronze with Chile claim­ing the sil­ver.

The T&T women, who have re­sumed train­ing, have ap­peared at the Pan Amer­i­can Cup three times pre­vi­ous­ly. The first was in 2004 in Bar­ba­dos when they end­ed eighth, and then in 2009 when they placed fourth in Bermu­da, and four years lat­er when they end­ed sev­enth in Ar­genti­na.


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