T&T’s Saarah Olton scored the open­ing goal but her Long Is­land Uni­ver­si­ty could not hold on­to the lead and fell 3-1 to Fair­field in the North­east Con­fer­ence Hock­ey Cham­pi­onship at Stat­en Is­land in New York, ear­li­er this month.

The LIU team which al­so fea­tured two oth­er Olton sis­ters in Saman­tha and Kait­lyn as well as Fe­li­cia King, all T&T se­nior women’s hock­ey team play­ers scored on their first penal­ty-cor­ner at­tempt of the match, with Saarah con­vert­ing off a pass from Em­ma Braeck­mans in the sec­ond minute.

How­ev­er, Fair­field hit back in the sec­ond half with three goals in ten min­utes to close out the game for the win as LIU end­ed as tour­na­ment run­ner-up for the sec­ond sea­son in a row.

With the loss, the LIU Sharks fin­ished the 2021 sea­son with a 7-11 over­all record, and 4-3 in the NEC.

De­spite the loss, Olton sis­ters, Saarah and Saman­tha were named to the All-Tour­na­ment Team along with team-mates Rachel Vel­lis.

In the semi­fi­nals, third-seed­ed LIU blanked sec­ond-ranked Wag­n­er, with Saman­tha and Saarah both in­volved in the open­ing goal in the 2-0 win while the Stags beat Rid­er 2-1 in the first semi­fi­nal, and end­ed 8-0 in the NEC.

For her ex­ploits this sea­son the Mor­vant-born King, a for­mer South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary stu­dent, along with LIU team­mates Sam­my Bell and Vel­lis was ho­n­oured by the NEC, earn­ing Sec­ond-Team All-NEC ho­n­ours.

It was the third such ho­n­our for Bell and the first for both Vel­lis and King.

King end­ed the sea­son with five goals, in­clud­ing three game-win­ners, and a team-high four as­sists.