sto­ries by NIGEL SI­MON

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

With three days to go be­fore the Se­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Mon­te­v­ideo flicks off at the Can­cha Ce­leste in Mon­te­v­ideo, Uruguay, on Thurs­day, both the T&T se­nior men’s and women’s hock­ey teams are yet to have con­fir­ma­tion of their de­par­ture to the tour­na­ment.

The 2025 Pan Amer­i­can Cup, the sev­enth edi­tion and the qua­dren­ni­al in­ter­na­tion­al field hock­ey cham­pi­onship of the Amer­i­c­as or­gan­ised by the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion, has eight teams in both the men and women’s com­pe­ti­tions:

These in­clude the six high­est-ranked teams from the 2022 Pan Amer­i­can Cup, the host coun­try if not al­ready qual­i­fied, and the win­ner from the 2024 Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge.

In the men’s tour­na­ment, three-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Uruguay and the USA will con­test Pool A, while Chile, Mex­i­co (Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge win­ner), Cana­da and T&T, who qual­i­fied as the win­ners from the 2024 Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge, will com­pete in Pool B.

The women’s Pan Amer­i­can Cup will al­so fea­ture eight teams in­clu­sive of Ar­genti­na, Cana­da, Chile, Mex­i­co, Paraguay, T&T, the USA and host Uruguay.

How­ev­er, due to their qual­i­fi­ca­tion through the 2024–25 FIH Pro League, if Ar­genti­na wins the women’s tour­na­ment, their qual­i­fi­ca­tion quo­ta will pass to the next best-ranked team. Ar­genti­na are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, hav­ing won all pre­vi­ous edi­tions.

Ar­genti­na, Cana­da, Chile, T&T, the USA and Uruguay qual­i­fied from the 2022 Pan Amer­i­can Cup.

At the end of the round-robin group phase, the top two teams in each pool will ad­vance to cross-over semi­fi­nals, from which the win­ners will meet in the fi­nal to de­ter­mine the qual­i­fi­er for next year’s FIH Hock­ey World Cup in the Nether­lands and Bel­gium.

Reached for com­ment. Willard Har­ris, Pres­i­dent of the T&T Hock­ey Board, ad­mit­ted that they were still await­ing the re­lease of fund­ing to pur­chase tick­ets for the team.

Har­ris ex­plained, “We made the re­quest for fund­ing for the teams to at­tend the tour­na­ment with all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, but I be­lieve the chang­ing of the gov­ern­ment and the lack of a Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) have im­pact­ed the pro­cess­ing of the re­quest.”

“So, our re­quest for the funds is now in the hands of the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, and we have been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them reg­u­lar­ly, and hope­ful­ly by the end of to­day (yes­ter­day) we will get con­fir­ma­tion of the re­lease of funds for the pur­chase of the tick­ets for the teams.”

Har­ris said the amount re­quest­ed by the T&HB was in the re­gion of $1.9 mil­lion for both se­nior teams as well as tech­ni­cal staff and two of­fi­cials who will rep­re­sent this coun­try at the tour­na­ment.

This coun­try’s un­der-21 and se­nior men’s hock­ey teams will al­so com­pete at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship in Asun­cion, Paraguay, from Au­gust 9 to 23, where they will com­pete against the host coun­try, Brazil, Mex­i­co, Ar­genti­na, Cana­da, the USA and Chile.

For the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship, Har­ris point­ed out that the na­tion­al team has al­ready been rat­i­fied and has no is­sues with re­gards to fund­ing, as the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games falls un­der the um­brel­la of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), which will be cov­er­ing all ex­pens­es.

In prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can Cup, the T&T se­nior men’s team came up against the Un­der-21 na­tion­al men’s team and two All-Star teams last week­end, and ac­cord­ing to coach Akim Tou­s­saint, it was to give the guys who are head­ing off to Uruguay some match prac­tice ahead of the Pan Am Cup.

He added, “On Fri­day, the T&T se­nior men won against the All-Star Team #1 2-0, while the Un­der-21s de­feat­ed the All-Star Team #2 4-3.

“Then on Sat­ur­day, the se­nior men again won 2-0 over the All-Star Team #2, while the Un­der-21s and the All-Star Team #1 drew 3-3. And on Sun­day, the se­nior men won 5-0 against the Un­der-21s, while the All-Star Team #2 edged the All-Star Team #1 2-1.”

De­spite the week­end of match­es, the T&T coach not­ed it is not the best way to go in­to the Pan Am Cup.

He said, “It’s not the best match prac­tice to go in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment with, but it was for us some sort of prac­tice for us to start get­ting a cou­ple of the sys­tems and tac­tics right.”

“So, we are still grate­ful for hav­ing the teams come out and par­take, es­pe­cial­ly the play­ers who aren’t part of the na­tion­al set-ups right now and still took that time to come out for three nights straight.”

The lo­cal women’s team al­so fea­tured in three warm-up match­es against Guyana and came away with three wins: 4-2 on Fri­day, 2-1 on Sat­ur­day and a sim­i­lar 2-1 mar­gin on Sun­day un­der the guid­ance of as­sis­tant coach Kristin Thomp­son in the ab­sence of head coach An­tho­ny Mar­cano.

T&T se­nior Pan Amer­i­can men’s hock­ey team: Cam­ron An­der­son, Mal­colm Bap­tiste, Lyn­dell By­er, Joel Daniel, Shaquille Daniel, Ghard­el El­cock, Aidan Elias, Caleb Guis­sep­pi, Teague Mar­cano (cap­tain), Jabari Perez, Matthew Per­ri­era, Mick­ell Pierre (cap­tain), Jor­dan Reynos, Akhen­aton Richard­son, Tar­rell Singh, Tariq Singh, Nicholas White­man, and Jo­van Wren.

T&T TEAM

Tech­ni­cal staff: Kesh­en John­son (man­ag­er), Akim Tou­s­saint (coach), Glen Fran­cis (as­sis­tant coach), Derek Ash­by (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Justin Be­har­ry (video tech­ni­cian)

T&T se­nior Pan Amer­i­can women’s hock­ey team: Leah Abra­ham, Zuriel An­toine, Avion Ash­ton (cap­tain), Re­nalle Con­stan­tine, Robyn Dash (cap­tain), Mikeshia De Sil­va, Danielle Dou­glas, Zene Hen­ry, Brit­tney Hingh, Nao­mi Hold­er, Fe­li­cia King-Ash­by (cap­tain), Jedyah Kistow, Skye Mc Clean, Jew­el Nurse (goal­keep­er), Nata­nia Rowe, Ky­ona Samp­son, Ar­resia Sandy (goal­keep­er), Gi­ann Sealy

Tech­ni­cal staff: Tere­sa Leza­ma (man­ag­er), An­tho­ny Mar­cano (coach), El­lis Chance (as­sis­tant coach), Den­no­ra George (train­er)

Men’s Pool match­es:

Thurs­day, Ju­ly 24: T&T vs Chile, 6.30 pm

Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 26: T&T vs Mex­i­co, 9.30 am

Mon­day, Ju­ly 28: T&T vs Cana­da, 9.30 am

Women’s Pool match­es:

Fri­day, Ju­ly 25: T&T vs Chile, 0.30 am

Sun­day, Ju­ly 27: T&T vs Mex­i­co, 9.30 am

Tues­day, Ju­ly 29: T&T vs USA, 9.30 am