T&T na­tion­al Un­der-17 girls foot­ball team coach Ayan­na Rus­sell will be hop­ing for a win­ning start when her team faces US Vir­gin Is­lands in their Group B open­er of their four-team Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 Girls Cham­pi­onship at Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va from 8 pm Mon­day night.

For T&T, it is the sev­enth ap­pear­ance in the qual­i­fy­ing stage with the team hav­ing ad­vanced to the Fi­nal Round in 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2022.

Two hours ear­li­er, Hon­duras and Be­lize, the two oth­er teams in the group will kick off the qual­i­fiers.

Speak­ing on the eve of her team’s open­ing match at their fi­nal train­ing ses­sion at the Re­pub­lic Bank Sports Club Ground Eighth Av­enue in Barataria, an up­beat Rus­sell, said her team was ready.

“My­self and my staff and more im­por­tant­ly, the girls are ready men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, so right now we are just en­joy­ing the fi­nal part of the prepa­ra­tion process,” she said.

“Our prepa­ra­tion has been good both tac­ti­cal­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing and it has al­so been a good one phys­i­cal­ly for the past cou­ple of weeks, and now it’s just about sharp­en­ing up men­tal­ly for what lies ahead.”

Re­flect­ing on the team’s build-up to the com­pe­ti­tion, Rus­sell not­ed that com­pared to pre­vi­ous teams, her group of play­ers had some ex­po­sure to play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match­es.

“We had match­es against St Vin­cent & the Grenadines, Bar­ba­dos and Suri­name and then we had the First Cit­i­zens Jew­els of the Caribbean com­pe­ti­tion where we matched up against Ja­maica, Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent & the Grenadines.

“So, we ac­tu­al­ly had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the play­ers as every­one was ac­tu­al­ly able to be seen lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and we re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed First Cit­i­zens for com­ing on board and giv­ing us that op­por­tu­ni­ty to have an in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment,” said the for­mer na­tion­al play­er.

“I think it has helped the squad im­mense­ly in gain­ing the much-need­ed ex­pe­ri­ence which has helped to pre­pare them for this tour­na­ment.”

At the end of the four-team se­ries, the group win­ner, along with the five oth­er group win­ners and the two best sec­ond-place fin­ish­ers will ad­vance to the fi­nal round, join­ing the four top-ranked teams – USA, Mex­i­co, Cana­da and Haiti for the 12-team fi­nal round and Rus­sell not­ed that her ex­pec­ta­tions are very high.

“My ob­jec­tives are very high and our ob­jec­tives are very clear and the girls are very con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ties to get the job done, and we in­tend to take it one game at a time.

“We ex­pect that all the games will be chal­leng­ing be­cause com­pared to when I played the teams now are way more or­gan­ised and have all at­tained some form of coach­ing ed­u­ca­tion which makes for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the game.

“But, based on the rank­ings I as­sume that our tough­est test to be Hon­duras, but that said we will not be tak­ing US Vir­gin Is­lands or Be­lize light­ly.”

With re­gard to her team strengths, Rus­sell said, “We are sol­id be­tween all the lines and it was very dif­fi­cult to se­lect the fi­nal team, but the girls who are on the team all want to rep­re­sent their coun­try and know they are rep­re­sent­ing some­thing big­ger than them­selves and while we know its Car­ni­val sea­son, we want every­one to come out and sup­port the girls,” said Rus­sell.

The lo­cal squad fea­tures some of the mem­bers of the girls’ Un­der-15 team which placed third af­ter a 3-0 win over Guatemala at the Con­ca­caf Un­der-15 Girls Cham­pi­onship which was held in T&T in Au­gust as well as a few of the ju­nior mem­bers of the U-20 women and se­nior teams in­clu­sive of Orielle Mar­tin, Rashe­da Archer, Niki­ta Go­sine and Hac­k­eemar Goodridge.

Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Nicaragua, and Puer­to Ri­co are al­so host­ing qual­i­fy­ing groups.

Puer­to Ri­co will host Group A, Nicaragua will en­ter­tain Group D and E, and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Group C and F.

The 12-team Con­ca­caf U-17 Women’s qual­i­fiers fi­nal round will al­so be played in a group for­mat con­sist­ing of three groups of four teams each from March 31 and April 6 with the three group win­ners and best sec­ond-placed team qual­i­fy­ing for the FI­FA U-17 Women’s World Cup in Mo­roc­co lat­er this year.

The six groups for Round One are as fol­lows:

Group A: Puer­to Ri­co, Bermu­da, Cay­man Is­lands, and Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines

Group B: Trinidad and To­ba­go, Hon­duras, Be­lize, and US Vir­gin Is­lands

Group C: Pana­ma, Cu­ba, Guyana, and Turks and Caicos Is­lands

Group D: El Sal­vador, Guatemala, Cu­raçao, and An­guil­la

Group E: Ja­maica, Nicaragua, and Saint Kitts and Nevis

Group F: Cos­ta Ri­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and Grena­da

T&T Un­der-17 women’s 21-mem­ber team

Goal­keep­ers: Zaira Aimey (Welling Utd FC/Eng­land), Zofia Richards (Crown Trace), Ken­isha Tay­lor (TT High Per­for­mance)

De­fend­ers: Kait­lyn Dar­went (QPCC), Hac­k­eemar Goodridge (Trend­set­ter Hawks), Daniel­la Paul (Trend­set­ter Hawks), Kani­ka Ro­driguez (San Au­gustin FC), Mikaela Year­wood (Car­di­nal FC), Jes­si­ca Nes­bitt (East­ern Coun­ty)

Mid­field­ers: Aniya Thomp­son (Ep­som & Ewell/Eng­land), Che­ri­na Steele (QPCC), Ty’Kaiya Den­nis (Jew­els), San­ni Wil­son (Flori­da Utd/USA), Rori Git­tens (Pro Se­ries), Zye­sha Potts (Jew­els), Mia Lee Chong (Or­lan­do City Acad­e­my/USA), Madi­son Camp­bell (Jew­els), Jay­da Her­bert (Trend­set­ter Hawks)

For­wards: Rashe­da Archer (Club San­do/AC PoS), Niki­ta Go­sine (Club San­do/Cox), Orielle Mar­tin (QPCC)

Tour­na­ment sched­ule:

T&T (Group B):

Venue: Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va:

Mon­day (Jan 27): Hon­duras vs Be­lize, 6 pm; T&T vs US Vir­gin Is­lands, 8 pm

Wednes­day (Jan 29): US Vir­gin Is­lands vs Hon­duras, 6 pm; Be­lize vs T&T, 8 pm

Fri­day (Jan 31): Be­lize vs US Vir­gin Is­lands 6 pm; T&T vs Honudras, 8 pm