​Teague Mar­cano’s dou­ble strike en­sured that the Trinidad and To­ba­go men’s hock­ey team ad­vanced to the fi­nal of the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games play-offs Sun­day, de­feat­ing Venezuela 2-1 as ac­tion re­sumed at the Field Hock­ey Sta­di­um in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

​Two days af­ter Mar­cano’s hat-trick guid­ed the men in the red, white, and black to a com­pre­hen­sive 10-0 de­mo­li­tion of Guatemala at the same venue, the Hol­combe Hock­ey Club’s re­cent sign­ing proved his worth a sec­ond time, this time in a close con­test with neigh­bours Venezuela. Mar­cano’s items came from penal­ty cor­ners, con­vert­ed af­ter four at­tempts at goal.

​How­ev­er, in a match that proved to be rel­a­tive­ly even with a 50-50 pos­ses­sion per­cent­age, the T&T men may con­sid­er them­selves for­tu­nate to come away with the vic­to­ry. The South Amer­i­cans were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of sev­en penal­ty cor­ners com­pared to T&T’s two in the 60-minute af­fair. From Venezuela’s sev­en penal­ty cor­ners, they man­aged just a lone flick from Andy Adri­an in the first quar­ter. Mar­cano’s goals came in the first two quar­ters.

​The re­sult means that T&T will now face Cu­ba in the fi­nal, af­ter the Cubans edged the Mex­i­cans 3-2 in the oth­er semi­fi­nal con­test.

Bas­ket­ball 3x3

T&T suc­cumbed to a heart­break­ing 19-16 de­feat against Mex­i­co in their Men’s Pool B con­test at the Sports Male­con Park yes­ter­day.

​The loss came a day af­ter the coun­try’s women’s team suf­fered an 12-11 de­feat against Venezuela and 13-3 to Cu­ba at the same venue. This time, in a match that ap­peared tighter on pa­per but saw T&T strug­gling for an­swers, the T&T men could not con­tain the Mex­i­can pair of Er­ick Barea and Julio Ruiz, both of whom drained sev­en points each to se­cure the win. Mex­i­co’s Jose Ze­sati al­so con­tributed five points to help pull the vic­to­ry away from the T&T men.

​For T&T, the tal­ent­ed Tyrik Singh led the scor­ing with six points, with the equal­ly tal­ent­ed Jabari Nar­cis con­tribut­ing five and Je­lani Val­ley adding four. Ah­keem Boyd, who was among the lead­ing scor­ers for T&T at pre­vi­ous in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments, failed to find his rhythm and fin­ished the match with just a sin­gle point.

​In the women's com­pe­ti­tion, the T&T unit suf­fered a 13-3 loss to Cu­ba in their sec­ond Pool C match on Sat­ur­day night. Com­bined with T&T's ear­li­er nar­row loss to Venezuela (12-11), the lo­cal team fin­ished last in Pool C and failed to ad­vance. T&T earned 14 points over­all to place last in the 12-team com­pe­ti­tion.

Bas­ket­ball

At the Are­na Ban­reser­vas, the T&T women's bas­ket­ball team aimed to fin­ish in sev­enth spot but went down 59-38 to Nicaragua in their clas­si­fi­ca­tion match.

​The lo­cal women were outscored in every quar­ter: 14-5 in the first, 17-13 at the half, and 14-9 in the third be­fore ul­ti­mate­ly falling to a 21-point loss to place eighth over­all.

​De­spite the re­sult, Jameela James was a bright spark, lead­ing the game with a match-high 15 points, while Kalimah Sookram added 10. The Nicaraguans de­liv­ered a more bal­anced team per­for­mance, see­ing points flow from near­ly all their play­ers. How­ev­er, Beyran Gon­za­lez stood out with a team-high 14 points, while the trio of Laisha Romero (8), Jah­sury An­der­son (7), and Leisha Hodg­son (6) pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary of­fen­sive sup­port.

Squash

​T&T’s squash pair of Marie-Claire Bar­cant and Mar­i­on Faith Gillezeau ex­pe­ri­enced mixed for­tunes Sun­day in the women’s sin­gles.

​Dom­i­nant play­ers in do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions, Bar­cant and Gillezeau com­fort­ably cruised through the open­ing round with iden­ti­cal 3-0 vic­to­ries over their op­po­nents, but were lat­er elim­i­nat­ed in the round of 16.

​Bar­cant was all smiles af­ter she tri­umphed 3-0 over Berme­lyn Pe­na of Do­mini­ca in straight sets (11-8, 11-7, 11-2) in the round of 32. How­ev­er, in the round of 16, her smiles turned to dis­ap­point­ment when she was brushed aside by Mar­got Prow of Bar­ba­dos. Bar­cant proved to be no match for the Ba­jan, who quick­ly took the open­ing set 11-3 and sealed the win with con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ries in the next two sets, 11-3 and 11-1, to ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nals.

​Gillezeau fol­lowed her com­pa­tri­ot with a con­fi­dence-boost­ing 3-0 tri­umph over Do­mini­ca’s In­d­hi­ra Navar­ro (11-2, 11-7, 11-5), a re­sult that al­so took her to the round of 16. How­ev­er, she was stopped in her tracks there, go­ing down to Lu­cia Bautista of Colom­bia 3-0 (11-3, 11-0, 11-1).

Ta­ble ten­nis

​Team T&T was dumped out in the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the ta­ble ten­nis team ac­tion. They start­ed the day pos­i­tive­ly, hold­ing off Cos­ta Ri­ca 3-2 in a dogged con­test to reach the round of eight, where they faced Cu­ba.

​Hop­ing for a strong start in the dou­bles, the pair of Imani Ed­wards and Rheann Chung could not repli­cate the dom­i­nance they showed against the Cos­ta Ri­cans a day pri­or, falling 3-1 to the Cuban duo of Es­tela Cre­spo and Ros­al­ba Aguiar (12-10, 11-9, 9-11, 11-7).

​Chloe Fras­er then lev­elled the match at one apiece when she de­feat­ed Daniela Fon­se­ca in a five-set thriller, 3-2 (11-4, 8-11, 6-11, 11-8, 11-13). Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that was all the team in red, white, and black could man­age, as the Cubans pre­vailed in the re­main­ing sin­gles match­es. Chung went down to Aguiar 3-1 (11-6, 11-8, 8-11, 11-9), and Ed­wards failed to win a game as Fon­se­ca pre­vailed com­fort­ably against her, 12-10, 11-8, 11-9.

Vol­ley­ball

There was no luck for the coun­try’s women’s vol­ley­ballers, who were beat­en con­vinc­ing­ly by Mex­i­co at the Ri­car­do Arias Vol­ley­ball Palace yes­ter­day.

​T&T proved to be no match for their op­po­nents and were swept aside in three straight sets, los­ing 25-10 in the open­er be­fore be­ing hum­bled 25-14 and 25-12 in the sub­se­quent sets.

Box­ing

Tian­na Guy had no an­swer for her Mex­i­can coun­ter­part, Paula Her­nan­dez, when the two met in a women’s 60kg quar­ter­fi­nal con­test at the Com­bat Pavil­ion.

​Guy, who is on the verge of tran­si­tion­ing from the am­a­teur to the pro­fes­sion­al ranks, went down to her op­po­nent, 4-1, which au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ruled her out of a podi­um fin­ish. In box­ing, com­peti­tors are guar­an­teed at least a bronze medal once they reach the fi­nal four (semi­fi­nals). How­ev­er, it was not to be for Guy yes­ter­day; on­ly one judge ruled the bout 29-28 in her favour, while the oth­er four scored the fight 29-28, 30-27, 29-28, and 29-28 for the Mex­i­can.

Shoot­ing

T&T marks­men Roger Daniel and Rhod­ney Allen, along with Mar­sha Bullen-Jones, failed to ad­vance to the fi­nals in the men's and women’s 10-me­tre air pis­tol events.

​Daniel and Allen fin­ished down the peck­ing or­der at 20th and 27th, re­spec­tive­ly, in a field of 31, while Bullen-Jones placed 26th out of 27 com­peti­tors. On­ly the top eight shoot­ers earned qual­i­fy­ing berths in both the men's and women’s cat­e­gories.

Sail­ing

​Kel­ly Ann Mary Ar­rindell was the lone com­peti­tor for T&T to make a mark in the one-per­son women’s re­gion­al dinghy event at Sali­nas Beach.

​Ar­rindell se­cured a max­i­mum of four points for win­ning her race in a com­pet­i­tive field that in­clud­ed run­ner-up Daniela Rivera of Venezuela, Sofia Ann Bermudez of Colom­bia, and Nathalia Ro­driguez of Do­mini­ca.

Cy­cling

En­durance rid­ers Tariq Woods, Liam Trepte, and Ak­il Camp­bell strug­gled in yes­ter­day’s men’s road race, which took place on Male­con Av­enue.

​In a race fea­tur­ing some 40 rid­ers, T&T’s best fin­ish came from Woods in 30th place, while both Trepte and Camp­bell failed to fin­ish. The race was won by Nicholas Gomez of Colom­bia, with Joseph Ramirez of Cos­ta Ri­ca tak­ing the sil­ver medal and Robert Gon­za­lez of Pana­ma se­cur­ing the bronze.