RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

T&T se­nior net­ballers have put to­geth­er dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mances in their open­ing three match­es of the Amer­i­c­as Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions Qual­i­fiers on­go­ing in Bar­ba­dos and to­day will like­ly take the same ap­proach against St Maarten.

The "Ca­lyp­so Girls" are chas­ing their fourth straight win in the eight-na­tion com­pe­ti­tion and af­ter a rest day, yes­ter­day will be back on court at the Sir Garfield Sobers Gym­na­si­um in Wildey, from 6 pm.

Vet­er­an play­er Rhon­da John-Davis, who was re­cent­ly re­newed as cap­tain of the na­tion­al unit, is pleased with the progress her team has made so far in the tour­na­ment.

"I am hap­py that we are able to meet some of our goals. We are not play­ing a com­plete, clean game just yet but it's ex­pect­ed as we have not had warm-up match­es com­ing in­to this tour­na­ment so it is ex­pect­ed that we are not com­plete­ly in sync but thus far we are do­ing re­al­ly good," said John-Davis.

The na­tion­al net­ball team, which is coached by Wes­ley "Pepe" Gomes, has re­lied heav­i­ly on its pro­fes­sion­al shoot­ers Saman­tha Mc­Collin and Kali­fa Mc­Collin and both have de­liv­ered with some su­perb shoot­ing, each shoot­ing at 90 per cent as the pair try to get T&T one of the two spots avail­able next year's Net­ball World Cup in Liv­er­pool, Eng­land.

Back­up shoot­ers for­mer na­tion­al Joelisa Coop­er and Tahi­rah Hollingsworth have ful­filled their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties well so too the de­fen­sive unit led by open­ing goal-keep­er Shaquan­da Greene, goal-de­fence Kem­ba Dun­can, wing-de­fence Onel­la Jack-Hill and Daystar Swift.

"I re­al­ly like the team de­fence," said John-Davis. "It's re­al­ly work­ing in our favour and is the rea­son why we are able to win the match­es we have won thus far con­vinc­ing­ly."

On Tues­day night in the T&T's most re­cent match, the "Ca­lyp­so Girls" claimed a com­fort­able 82-41 win over the Oberon Pit­ter­son-Nit­tie-coached Grena­da team, to keep a clean slate af­ter easy wins over the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (USA) in its open­ing match, 86-29 on Sun­day and Cana­da (80-26) on Mon­day.

To­day, T&T, who is in sec­ond place be­hind leader Bar­ba­dos, the on­ly oth­er un­de­feat­ed team in the com­pe­ti­tion, will aim to ease past sev­enth-placed St Maarten, who has won one match against Ar­genti­na (36-32) and suf­fered two loss­es ver­sus Bar­ba­dos (110-12) and St Vin­cent & The Grenadines (SVG), 78-27.

John-Davis said, "I am ob­vi­ous­ly look­ing for­ward to the rest of the games that we have left to play. I am hop­ing that we con­tin­ue to grow and we ac­tu­al­ly im­prove even though we are mak­ing most of our goals. We want to chal­lenge our­selves some more so I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing how far we can reach by the end of the tour­na­ment.

To­mor­row, the na­tion­al team will like­ly gift them­selves an In­de­pen­dence Day vic­to­ry over win­less Ar­genti­na. The fol­low­ing day, the lo­cal girls meet SVG then Bar­ba­dos in their fi­nal match.