T&T Un­der-21 net­ball team will have to play for third spot af­ter falling to dom­i­nant Ja­maica, 40-33, in the 2025 Net­ball World Youth Cup (NWYC) Amer­i­c­as Qual­i­fiers in Pointe-a-Pitre, Guade­loupe on Sat­ur­day (Ju­ly 13).

The lo­cal net­ballers left the Paul Con­chon Hall dis­ap­point­ed af­ter lead­ing for most of the match - the first three quar­ters - un­til the Ja­maicans took over late in the fourth quar­ter in the sec­ond semi­fi­nal match that evening. In the first semi­fi­nal, Bar­ba­dos de­feat­ed Grena­da 63-45.

Cap­tained by Des­tiny Williams, T&T made a sol­id start and led the first quar­ter, 12-10 and held a nar­row one-goal ad­van­tage at half­time, 19-18.

The U-21 “Ca­lyp­so Girls” did well to main­tain their com­po­sure on the re­sump­tion and earned a two-goal lead, 27-25 at the end of the third quar­ter as their de­fend­ers did ex­treme­ly well to re­strict Ja­maica in the fast-paced match-up.

The mo­men­tum of play changed though two min­utes in­to the fi­nal quar­ter as the Ja­maicans fought back to tie the score at 30 with some eight min­utes to go in the match.

The un­beat­en U-21 “Sun­shine Girls” went on to take the lead 32-30 with 6.67 to go and nev­er looked back. T&T, coached by Kali­fa MC­Collin-Lopez, made sev­er­al cost­ly er­rors in the cru­cial mo­ment of the match and had to set­tle for the sev­en-goal de­feat, un­for­tu­nate­ly.

The win means Ja­maica earned one of the two au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing spots for next year’s NWYC in Gibral­tar. The un­de­feat­ed Bar­ba­di­ans claimed the oth­er spot af­ter a com­mand­ing per­for­mance against the Grena­di­ans and will face off against Ja­maica for the ti­tle to­day at 6 pm.

The third-place team and the two fi­nal­ists will qual­i­fy for the 2025 Net­bal World Youth Cup in Gibral­tar from Sep­tem­ber 19-28.

The lo­cal net­ballers will now have to bat­tle Grena­da for the third spot and the fi­nal place for next year’s NWYC. Th first pass is at 4 pm.

Ear­li­er, Cana­da fin­ished fifth and af­ter de­feat­ing St Maarten, 49-21 and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da took the eighth spot ahead of Cay­man Is­lands win­ning that play­off match-up, 41-39.

Sat­ur­day’s (Ju­ly 13) re­sults

Semi­fi­nals

T&T 33 vs Ja­maica 40

Bar­ba­dos 63 vs Grena­da 45

5th-6th place play­off

St Maarten 21 vs Cana­da 49

7th- 8th place play­off

Cay­man Is­lands 39 vs An­tigua 41

Sun­day’s (Ju­ly 14) match­es

Third-place play­off

T&T vs Grena­da, 4 pm

Fi­nal

Ja­maica vs Bar­ba­dos, 6 pm

Clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, 8 pm