T&T senior women’s hockey coach, Anthony Marcano has admitted that his team has been faced with a lot of logistical problems in their preparation for next month’s Indoor Indoor Pan American Cups (IPAC) in the USA.
The tournament will be hosted by USA Field Hockey for both women and men and takes place at the Training Center, Spring City, near Philadelphia and, Pennsylvania, from Friday, June 25 to Sunday, June 27, 2021, and will qualify teams to the 12-team 2022 FIH Indoor Hockey World Cup from 3 to 7 February 2022 in Liège, Belgium.
It was originally scheduled for February 2021 but was postponed due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
A former national men’s player and now a Level III Coach, Marcano will be hoping to qualify a very youthful women’s squad to its first Indoor World Cup since competing at the inaugural edition in 2003, Leipzig, Germany after winning the 2002 Pan American title in Rockville, USA.
But, first, the national women’s team will need to finish top of a six-team series involving the host USA, Argentina, Canada, Uruguay, and Guyana.
The six teams will contest a round-robin series at the end of which the top two teams will play the final from which the winner will qualify for next year’s World Cup.
So far the teams to qualify for the women’s competition Belgium are Kazakhstan (Asia), Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Ukraine (Europe), Belgium (Host), Namibia (Africa), Australia and New Zealand (Oceania).
Contacted for comment on the team’s preparation Marcano was quick to point out that the group of players in training consist of some young athletes.
He said, “It’s a very young team and not as experienced as the one that last competed in Guyana (where T&T ended fifth) four years ago.
“We have a lot of under-21 players as part of this group and we still have a few players who were part of the last Pan Am team like Savannah de Freitas, her sister Shaniah De Freitas, Zene Henry, Brittney Hingh, and Amanda George.
“To that core, we have added Felicia King, the Olton sisters, Samantha, Saarah and Kaitlyn along with Chelsea Day, Gabrielle Thompson and Arissa Sandy from Tobago.
“So it’s a very diverse group and we have pulled in some under-21s to give them some exposure leading up to their Pan American Under-21 Championship like Naomi Sampson and Mia Otero just to try and create an environment where they are still learning and at the same time add some value to the junior team, that’s hopefully again if their tournament comes off in Chile at the end of August going into September.”
Concerning the health and safety protocols being put in place for the tournament due to the coronavirus, Marcano said it’s going to be a tough one for the technical staff.
He admitted, “This tournament in the USA in itself is going to be tough as it's a lot of work for managers to manage when it comes to the health and safety protocols.
“I think the USA Field Hockey and the Pan American Hockey Federation has left a lot of responsibility on the teams to keep their “bubble” safe.
“I think one of the good things they are doing is that teams will have their vehicles so you will be among your team and not have to mix while transporting your team to and from the games.
A concern for Marcano though was the re-entering of the country and how long it may take to do so.
He said, “When it comes to vaccination and getting into the USA or not we then have to look at the time to come back home, how long it will take to be in quarantine, whether you are vaccinated or not because we see some people who have been vaccinated still having issues to come back into the country and still have to quarantine.”
Following the new restrictions on the number of persons being allowed to congregate, Marcano said he has also had to make some adjustments in training.
“There is a lot of things that we have to take into place here where it comes to training at the facilities and trying to stay in coherence with what the government is stating,” stressed Marcano.
“So our numbers have been reduced and we now have to work on training with groups of five and therefore it takes longer to cover certain topics in the training scheme.
“We now have to ask ourselves, will we get through with what we want to do in the short space of time.
We had planned for 50 sessions in this period to cover certain technical and tactical stuff but is that possible again seeing that we have to reduce numbers in training, I think maybe not.
Looking ahead, Marcano an FIH Educator, admitted that there is also a lot of logistics that have to be work out and a lot of things that have to be made a priority.
“We need to decide what it is that we want to be successful in the tournament coming up.”
“But again there are challenges and we have to roll over these challenges the same as any other game as we can't just say this is the reason why so we just have to keep fighting and finding solutions as to best we can be effective in our training and also to perform well in the tournament,” ended Marcano.