Curleen Lara’s sharp shoot­ing re­mained the fo­cal point of T&T’s un­de­feat­ed cam­paign as the hosts up­staged St Lu­cia 43-20 in the Jean Pierre Caribbean Youth Net­ball Tour­na­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC) in St Au­gus­tine on Wednes­day.

​T&T set the tone ear­ly as they have done all tour­na­ment, sti­fling the St Lu­cian at­tack and es­tab­lish­ing a 14-5 lead by the end of the first quar­ter. Lara, the goal-shoot­er, was near­ly un­stop­pable in the cir­cle, fin­ish­ing with 35 goals from 41 at­tempts. Her poise was com­ple­ment­ed by Zewdi­tu Alexan­der (5/9) and Venus Kirk (3/5), who shared the goal-at­tack bib and pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary sec­ondary scor­ing to keep St Lu­cia’s de­fence stretched.

​As­sis­tant coach and for­mer na­tion­al shoot­er Si­mone Mor­gan not­ed that while the vic­to­ry was de­ci­sive, there were ar­eas in need of re­fine­ment.

​“We start­ed off try­ing to con­trol the mid-court pace in the at­tack, but we had a lit­tle too many turnovers–some­thing we have to sharp­en up on,” Mor­gan said. “We al­so got too com­pla­cent in the last quar­ter. How­ev­er, Lara has done a great job from where she was to where she is now. I am proud of all my shoot­ers; we’re just tak­ing it one day at a time.”

​St Lu­cia, com­ing off a nar­row loss to Grena­da, strug­gled to find their rhythm against T&T’s de­fen­sive pres­sure. Ne­r­i­ah Charlery led the scor­ing for the vis­it­ing side with 15 goals from 18 tries, while cap­tain Nai­ja Fer­di­nand added five from eight. De­spite their ef­forts, T&T’s mid-court tran­si­tion was too fast for the St Lu­cians to con­tain, lead­ing to a 29-12 half­time ad­van­tage that ef­fec­tive­ly sealed the con­test.

​The ju­nior “Ca­lyp­so Girls” main­tained their in­ten­si­ty through the third pe­ri­od, ex­tend­ing the lead to 39-16 be­fore a shaky fi­nal quar­ter where T&T was un­able to score un­til mid­way through the ses­sion. How­ev­er, the host team re­cov­ered to add four goals to its tal­ly, se­cur­ing the 23-goal vic­to­ry. The win keeps T&T at the top of the stand­ings by goal av­er­age head­ing in­to the high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed clash against Bar­ba­dos to­day.

​Ear­li­er, in the most com­pet­i­tive match of the round, Do­mini­ca held off a late surge from the Cay­man Is­lands to claim their first win of the tour­na­ment, 24-22. In the oth­er match, un­beat­en Bar­ba­dos, led by Tyra Grif­fith and Bri­an­na Wal­lace, who com­bined for 30 goals, de­feat­ed An­tigua & Bar­bu­da 39-13 to keep pace with T&T at the top of the stand­ings.

Yes­ter­day

Re­sults

St Lu­cia 20 (Ne­r­i­ah Charlery 15/18, Nai­ja Fer­di­nand 5/8) vs T&T 43 (Curleen Lara 35/41, Zewdi­tu Alexan­der 5/9, Venus Kirk 3/5). Quar­ters: 1st 14-5, 2nd 29-12, 3rd 39-16 (All in favour of T&T).

Cay­man Is­lands 22 (Se­ri­ah Fer­di­nand 22/32, Leila Turell 0/0, Lei’a Grizzel 0/0) vs Do­mini­ca 24 (Kris­sia Pierre 11/15, Jay­co­l­i­ah Ben­jamin 13/15). Quar­ters: 1st 4-3, 2nd 13-8, 3rd 17-16 (All in favour of Do­mini­ca).

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da 13 (Tina Gra­ham 8/13, Aza­i­lya Si­mon 3/4, Sasheel Lewis 2/2) vs Bar­ba­dos 39 (Tyra Grif­fith 16/29, Bri­an­na Wal­lace 14/17, Cher­ish Gib­son 9/11). Quar­ters: 1st 12-3, 2nd 23-7, 3rd 32-9 (All in favour of Bar­ba­dos).

Stand­ings

Pos*Team*P*W*D*L*GF*GA*GD*Pts

1*T&T*4*4*0*0*160*49*+111*8

2*Bar­ba­dos*4*4*0*0*124*57*+67*8

3*St Lu­cia*5*3*0*2*149*120*+29*6

4*Grena­da*4*2*0*2*92*92*0*4

5*Cay­man*5*1*0*4*80*163*-83*2

6*Do­mini­ca*4*1*0*3*65*112*-47*2

7*An­tigua/Bar­bu­da*4*0*0*4*51*128*-77*0

To­day’s match­es

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da vs Do­mini­ca, 3 pm

Cay­man Is­lands vs Grena­da, 4.30 pm

Bar­ba­dos vs T&T, 6 pm

Clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, 7 pm