Gabrielle Thomp­son scored a field goal and the de­fense did the rest, blank­ing Mex­i­co 1-0, to take sev­enth spot in the women’s hock­ey com­pe­ti­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

The on­ly item scored came late in the first quar­ter when Thomp­son found the back of the net in the 14th minute to help coach Akim Tou­s­saint team edge the Mex­i­cans at the Hock­ey Sports Cen­tre.

T&T put the pres­sure on ear­ly, out­shoot­ing the Mex­i­cans 6-0 five of which were penal­ty cor­ners in the first quar­ter, The oth­er of course was the win­ner from Thomp­son.

“Again we knew these were the games we would be com­pet­i­tive in we knew we had to stick to the game plan to make sure that we come out with the win and again Mex­i­co had beat­en us for the past five times that we played them but we know once we stick to our game plan and get that one goal we could de­fend, said Tou­s­saint.

T&T’s de­fense was up for the task, and goal­keep­er Petal Der­ry, who made one save through 60 min­utes of work, record­ed her first shutout of the tour­na­ment.

Mex­i­co had 14 shots, at goal 13 of which were penal­ty cor­ners com­pared to T&T’s six.

“That was our main game plan, to make sure our de­fen­sive short cor­ner unit is strong enough to keep it out,” said Tou­s­saint. “I’m very, very proud of the girls, es­pe­cial­ly in the de­fen­sive cor­ner unit be­cause about 16 or so cor­ners, ze­ro goals, ex­cel­lent work by them.”

The score­board was silent for the next three quar­ters, re­sult­ing in the “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women” nar­row win. The lo­cal team en­tered the sev­enth to eighth match af­ter get­ting edged, 1-0 to Cu­ba in round one of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­offs on Thurs­day. This af­ter a win­less group stage, falling to the USA (15-0), Uruguay (11-0) Ar­genti­na (21-0) re­spec­tive­ly.

“Well it was a learn­ing curve for us, we ac­tu­al­ly want­ed the sixth place to qual­i­fy for the oth­er tour­na­ment but even though we didn’t get that one I’m so dis­ap­point­ed to lose that 1-0 to Cu­ba. We stuck to the game plan com­ing to the Mex­i­co game, know­ing that we’re not com­ing here to lie down but play to the whis­tle and that’s ex­act­ly what the girls did,” said Tou­s­saint.

His mind­set now for the team is de­vel­op­ing the cur­rent bunch and at­tract­ing play­ers to the game.

The for­mer se­nior men’s na­tion­al play­er said: “Go­ing for­ward, we are go­ing to have a num­ber of girls leav­ing the team be­cause this is some of the girls’ last tour­na­ment. We are go­ing to have to sole­ly fo­cus on de­vel­op­ment, get­ting a good bit of girls in­to the sport as well as the one we have in Trinidad al­ready, get­ting them de­vel­oped in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard so that’s the main goal when we get back to T&T.”

<Robin­son fin­ish­es sev­enth>

T&T’s Nicholas Robin­son placed sev­enth in the B fi­nal in the men’s K1 1,00m ca­noe sprint at La­gu­na Grande at San Pe­dro la Paz.

Robin­son clocked four min­utes and 15.69 sec­onds, pad­dling across the fin­ish line sev­enth in a race won by Be­lize’s Ama­do Cruzwith 3:51.69. The Be­lizean pad­dler beat Chilean Miguel Ariel Va­len­cia (3:51.88), in­to sec­ond place by 0.19 of a sec­ond. Ed­dy Bar­ran­co of Puer­to Ri­co took third place with 3:53.49.

Venezuela’s Ray Acu­na led for most of the race but Ama­do went past him in the last quar­ter of the match. Va­len­cia threat­ened the leader close to the end but Cruz man­aged to hold him off.

Robin­son fin­ished fifth in semi­fi­nal two at San­ti­a­go 2023 ear­ly on Wednes­day morn­ing and qual­i­fied to the B fi­nal. He placed sev­enth in the first round with 4:23.27 and then placed fifth in the next round with 4:19.10. Yes­ter­day was his fastest time.

<Richards Jr. lies 29th on leader­board>

Chris Richards Jr had his best round yes­ter­day, shoot­ing a 3-un­der 69 to sit in 29th spot af­ter round three in the men’s in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion at the Prince of Wales Coun­try Club.

How­ev­er, a first-round 11-over 83 and sec­ond-round 4-over 76, helped keep him down the or­der at 12-over 228, head­ing in­to the fi­nal round to­day.

Mex­i­co Abra­ham An­cer is in a tie for the lead with Colom­bian Se­bas­t­ian Munoz af­ter shoot­ing 7-un­der 65 and 4-un­der 68 in round three at 16-un­der 200. Eti­enne Pa­p­ineau of Cana­da is in third place af­ter shoot­ing 5-un­der.