Coach of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Un­der 21 net­ball team Khal­i­fa Mc Collins is ral­ly­ing be­hind her play­ers to con­tin­ue to give their best in the sec­ond phase of this year’s Net­ball World Youth Cup in Gibral­tar. T&T won its first match against Bar­ba­dos 58-33 on Tues­day af­ter three straight de­feats down to Fi­ji (53-40) and then to Malawi (68-29) and South Africa (105-15).

Fol­low­ing the loss to the South Africans, the young Ca­lyp­so girls fin­ished in fourth po­si­tion in Pool D, were in con­tention of qual­i­fy­ing for the quar­ter­fi­nals, and now have to fo­cus on the mi­nor plac­ings.

On Wednes­day, South Africa beat Fi­ji 86-35 to top Pool D with eight points, af­ter win­ning all four match­es. Malawi was sec­ond on six points (three wins, one loss) with a vic­to­ry over Bar­ba­dos (70-23), al­so yes­ter­day. Fi­ji end­ed in third on four points (two wins, two loss­es), fol­lowed by T&T (two points, 1 win, 3 loss­es) and win­less Bar­ba­dos. 0 points (0 wins, four loss­es)

Coach of the team Kali­fa Mc Collins is look­ing ahead to the rest of the com­pe­ti­tion. “We have to go in there with open minds, know­ing we have to stick to a task and be con­sis­tent. Some­thing that we spoke about is lim­it­ing our un­forced er­rors be­cause at this lev­el peo­ple (the op­pos­ing teams) are pun­ished for mak­ing mis­takes.”

Mc Collins, who played pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Wales, Eng­land, New Zealand and Aus­tralia, said the team will be look­ing to im­prove on fin­ish­ing in 17th spot at the 2017 edi­tion of the Youth Cup in Botswana. “That is not where we want to be be­cause we are a much bet­ter team than that and a much bet­ter team than the per­for­mances we would have put out there. I think the key thing for us is to go in­to this next round know­ing that we still have to fight and we still have to com­pete for the high­est po­si­tion pos­si­ble.”

She is thank­ful for the ex­po­sure the young play­ers are hav­ing in Gibral­tar. “Just get­ting the ex­pe­ri­ence for them to go back home and share every­thing they would have learnt with their col­leagues back home. We are just thank­ful for the sup­port. Net­ball at this lev­el is very, very dif­fi­cult. The girls are valu­able for the ex­pe­ri­ence, and they are go­ing to con­tin­ue to go out there, fight and make Trinidad and To­ba­go proud.”

The Maikea Bram­ble-cap­tained T&T squad will face the third-place team in Pool A, Malaysia, to­day at 4am (TT time) in the 9th-16th po­si­tion play-offs. The win­ner of that en­counter will face the vic­tor in the Wales/Sin­ga­pore matchupset for 6am (TT time) to­mor­row in the 9th to 12th place semi­fi­nals.

Three-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons New Zealand fin­ished first in Pool A with four vic­to­ries (8 pts). Run­ners-up Cook Is­land end­ed on six points, ahead of Malaysia (4 pts) and Gibral­tar (2 pts). Zam­bia did not show at the tour­na­ment and for­feit­ed all match­es.

For­mer win­ners Aus­tralia dom­i­nat­ed Pool C, re­main­ing un­beat­en. Scot­land, Samoa, Sin­ga­pore and North­ern Ire­land fol­lowed be­hind.

Eng­land (8 pts) was un­beat­en in Pool C and beat sec­ond-placed Ja­maica, 64-33 on Wednes­day. Wales and Ton­ga were next. Sri Lan­ka was a no-show.