T&T Un­der-18 net­ball team com­plet­ed its first win to place sev­enth in the Fast5 com­pe­ti­tion at the Trin­ba­go2023 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) on Thurs­day at the Shaw Park Com­plex in To­ba­go.

In their sev­enth-eighth place­ment play­off, the lo­cal youth net­ballers de­feat­ed Caribbean neigh­bour St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, 25-13.

It was the meet­ing of the two last-place teams from the pre­lim­i­nary round groups. In Group A, T&T, coached by Ky­la Kei­th-Wil­son, suf­fered de­feats to Cana­da (22-11) and Scot­land (37-14), re­spec­tive­ly on the first day, Tues­day, then the fol­low­ing day, fell to Aus­tralia (64-2) in their fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary round match be­fore go­ing un­der to Botswana (15-11) in the fifth-eighth clas­si­fi­ca­tion play­offs semi­fi­nals.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines en­tered their fi­nal match of the Fast5 com­pe­ti­tion with the same record as T&T with loss­es against Botswana (18-16), South Africa (72-8), Eng­land (42-14) and Cana­da (25-11) in Group B.

T&T, how­ev­er, thanks to an ex­cel­lent shoot­ing per­for­mance from goal-at­tack Jelis­sa Goodridge, net­ting all 15 of her at­tempts from var­i­ous po­si­tions in the cir­cle which were worth ei­ther one, two or three goals and dou­ble in the pow­er­play, in a match her team did a bet­ter job con­vert­ing off turnovers than its op­po­nent.

Goodridge opened the match with goal-shoot­er Sha­nia Abra­ham (7/13) and they did well in help­ing T&T hold the edge at the end of the first six-minute pe­ri­od, 4-3. In the sec­ond stan­za, the host team set­tled down some­what and pushed fur­ther ahead 9-5 at the half.

On the re­sump­tion, T&T gave St Vin­cent and the Grenadines net­ballers very lit­tle room for a come­back and forged fur­ther ahead by sev­en goals (15-8) at the close of the third ses­sion. The lo­cal shoot­ers had their best per­for­mance in the fourth pe­ri­od, scor­ing in dou­ble-fig­ures (10), com­pared to their op­po­nent's five, to seal the 12-goal vic­to­ry for T&T, earn­ing their first win and sev­enth spot in the eight-team com­pe­ti­tion.

Aus­tralia emerged with the gold medal af­ter de­feat­ing South Africa in the fi­nal, 39-29. It was a fit­ting fi­nale as the two pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en met hav­ing topped the pre­lim­i­nary round, the Aus­tralians in group A al­so beat­ing Scot­land (29-8), Cana­da (54-6), Eng­land (44-25) in the semi­fi­nals. The Pro­teas dom­i­nat­ed group B with suc­cess against Scot­land (51-20) fol­low­ing wins ver­sus Eng­land (40-30) and Botswana (58-3).

In the medal match, Aus­tralia led the South Africans by one (10-9) at the end of the first pe­ri­od and nev­er looked back lead­ing 19-11 at the half and 32-17 in the third. South Africa man­aged to outscore its op­po­nent in the fourth pe­ri­od 14-7 but the deficit was too much to over­come in the fast-paced for­mat. The Aus­tralian Di­a­monds held on for the 10-goal win.

Ear­li­er, Eng­land earned the bronze medal over Scot­land. The Eng­lish net­ballers, who placed sec­ond in Group B in the pre­lim­i­nary round, claimed a 34-29 vic­to­ry over the Scot­tish team.

In the sec­ond match of the day, Botswana pre­vailed over Cana­da, 17-13, to seal fifth spot.