Yvette Her­moso Joel, Adaya John­son, Joshua John­son and Hay­den Lee will rep­re­sent T&T at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in El Sal­vador, from June 23 - Ju­ly 8.

It will be the first time that chess will be played at the CAC Games.

A re­cent re­lease said: "The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Chess for the Amer­i­c­as (Con­ti­nen­tal body) con­firmed the in­clu­sion of chess in the CAC Games in March 2022, which was even­tu­al­ly pub­lished by FIDE that same month at (https://www.fide.com/news/1644).

T&T had two play­ers for each cat­e­go­ry in the hy­brid qual­i­fi­ca­tion event at the Her­itage Hall, St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain over the week­end of Jan­u­ary 21-22.

T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent Son­ja John­son said she was elat­ed that T&T will be rep­re­sent­ed at such a mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion giv­en that it is the first time chess will be one of the sports in the CAC Games his­to­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to John­son: “At the end of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion event on Sun­day, we re­alised that we may have been in a good po­si­tion to qual­i­fy for the CAC Games. When the of­fi­cial news came on Tues­day, af­ter the Fair­play re­view, the enor­mi­ty of this op­por­tu­ni­ty sank in that we will be part of his­to­ry. This is an in­cred­i­ble mo­ment for chess and for Team T&T.

"The TTCA thanks the of­fi­cial ar­biter, Rod­er­ick Noel, and team man­ag­er Kee­lan Hunte for their ef­forts over the qual­i­fi­ca­tion week­end. We al­so are very grate­ful to St Mary Jean Ay­ow from St Joseph’s Con­vent, who has al­ways been a good part­ner to the TTCA through her ster­ling ef­forts. The Her­itage Hall re­mains one of the favourite lo­ca­tions for these types of event due to its warm, mod­ern de­sign and very com­fort­able ameni­ties.

"The play­ers will now have to en­gage in of­fi­cial train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for these games and the TTCA looks for­ward to the sup­port from the TTOC (T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee) and the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment in our bid to en­sure that T&T has ac­cess to re­sources to per­form well in this event."