T&T Un­der-21 team got its cam­paign off to a win­ning start against St Maarten on the sec­ond day of the Amer­i­c­as Qual­i­fiers for the 2025 Net­ball World Youth Cup (NWYC)at the Hall Paul Chon­chon Sports Com­plex in Pointe-a-Pietre, Guade­loupe on Tues­day (Ju­ly).

The T&T net­ballers whipped St Maarten 62-23 in the first match of the day. The St Maarten team scored first be­fore T&T re­spond­ed and nev­er looked back scor­ing 15 unan­swered goals to go up 15-1. T&T's op­po­nents were on tar­get on­ly two more times as the first quar­ter end­ed 15-3 in favour of the lo­cal ladies.

Goal-at­tack Jelisia Goodridge was heads and shoul­ders above the St Maarten de­fence. Goodridge used her speed as well to evade her mark­ers. Goal-shoot­er Shaniya Mor­gan sup­port­ed as she pow­ered her way around the shoot­ing cir­cle.

The pair con­tin­ued the goal-spree in the sec­ond quar­ter to put the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" up 33-9 at half­time.

Maikea Bram­ble and Kat­ty Ann Gra­ham took over the shoot­ing du­ties in the sec­ond half and en­sured T&T main­tained the ad­van­tage lead­ing 44-16 at the end of the third break.

The Des­tiny Williams-cap­tained squad kept on find­ing the net and were 40 goals ahead at the fi­nal whis­tle de­spite a late ral­ly by St Maarten who was look­ing to re­bound from go­ing down 75-18 to Bar­ba­dos on the first day of play on Mon­day.

Head coach Kali­fa Mc Collin-Lopez was pleased the play­ers won their first match say­ing: "It was good to get the win un­der our belt."

She added though, "How­ev­er, we did set a tar­get (20 goals per quar­ter) that we were not able to meet. So we def­i­nite­ly need to go back to the draw­ing board and shift our fo­cus back where it needs to be."

Mc Collin-Lopez said the staff made sub­sti­tu­tions at half-time to en­sure as many play­ers as pos­si­ble were able to have time on the court.

"We made changes the play­ers who came on were a bit ner­vous but this was the first game (and) they got the nerves out," said the head coach, who is up­beat that her charges will con­tin­ue to im­prove in the week-long tour­na­ment.

"I think as we go along we will def­i­nite­ly build on per­for­mances. In the last quar­ter, they had the con­fi­dence to turn and give the ball to the shoot­ers and get bet­ter each time."

T&T was sched­uled to be in ac­tion again last night against hosts Guade­loupe, who was out­played by An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 50-5 on Mon­day (Ju­ly 8).

Bar­ba­dos and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da al­so faced each oth­er yes­ter­day (Tues­day) from 5 pm.

Cana­da beat the Cay­man Is­lands 35-16 in the open­ing match of the Qual­i­fiers, al­so on Mon­day.

T&T will be in ac­tion to­day against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da at 7 pm, in the fi­nal match of the day.

Favourites Ja­maica be­gin their quest when they face the Cay­man Is­lands in the first en­counter of the day at 9 am.

St Maarten and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da will clash at 11 am be­fore the Ja­maicans square against Cana­da at 5 pm.

Cana­da, Grena­da, Cay­man Is­lands and Ja­maica are the teams in Pool A while T&T, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Maarten and Guade­loupe com­pete in the Pool A field.

The top two teams in each group will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals sched­uled for Ju­ly 13 with the third-place play-off and the fi­nals on Ju­ly 14.

The third-place team and the two fi­nal­ists will qual­i­fy to rep­re­sent the Amer­i­c­as re­gion at the 2025 NWYC in Gibral­tar from Sep­tem­ber 19-28.

Net­ball World Youth Cup Qual­i­fiers

Re­sults

Tues­day (Ju­ly 9)

T&T 62 (Shaniya Mor­gan 25/32, Jelisia Goodridge 3/5, Maikea Bram­ble 28/32, Kat­ty Ann Gra­ham 6/9) vs St Maarten 23

Mon­day (Ju­ly 8)

Cana­da 35 vs Cay­man Is­lands 16

Bar­ba­dos 75 vs St Maarten 18

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 50 vs Guade­loupe 5

Sched­ule

Tues­day (Ju­ly 9)

Bar­ba­dos vs An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, 5 pm

Guade­loupe vs T&T, 7 pm

Wednes­day (Ju­ly 10)

Cay­man Is­lands vs Ja­maica, 9 am

St Maarten vs An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, 11 am

Cana­da vs Ja­maica, 5 pm

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da vs Trinidad & To­ba­go, 7 pm