T&T Un­der-18 men’s hand­ball team suf­fered a heavy 17-62 de­feat to Cana­da in their open­ing match in Group A of the 2026/2027 Youth (Un­der-18) Men’s IHF Tro­phy North Amer­i­ca and The Caribbean (Youth) Cham­pi­onship at the Puer­to Ri­co Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre in Toa Ba­ja, Puer­to Ri­co on Tues­day (Oc­to­ber 6).

Hav­ing ar­rived in Puer­to Ri­co around Mon­day mid-night, the Ken­win Go­den-coached team, be­hind two months of prepa­ra­tions and lit­tle reime to re­cov­er from their flight were no match for the Cana­di­ans who dom­i­nat­ed the first 30-min­utes half, and scored al­most a goal per minute to lead 31-5 at the in­ter­val.

In the sec­ond-half, the T&T at­tack man­aged to pro­vide much more of a spark and added 12 fur­ther goals, but once again the North Amer­i­cans tal­lied 31 more goals to seal the dom­i­nant win.

To­day (Wednes­day), T&T will re­turn to ac­tion against Mex­i­co in an­oth­er 1 pm start be­fore end­ing their round-robin group phase on Thurs­day against Guade­loupe, al­so from 1 pm.

The Mex­i­cans will en­ter the match against T&T on the back off a loss as well, 27-32 against Guade­loupe af­ter tar­il­ing 10-15 at then half-time break.

Guade­loupe is hop­ing to fol­low in their foot steps of their se­nior men’s team who cap­tured their first ever se­nior men’s ti­tle ear­li­er this eyar.

The tour­na­ment in Puer­to Ri­co is the of­fi­cial con­ti­nen­tal youth hand­ball cham­pi­onship for the re­gion and serves as the start to the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games 2028 qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign and a Youth World Cup qual­i­fi­er

Last night in Group B, de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons USA and host Puer­to Ri­co clash­ing in the fi­nal match af­ter Mar­tinique faced Green­land to be­gintheir round-robin se­ries.

The eight teams are com­pet­ing for two tick­ets to the IHF In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Tro­phy in Spring 2027, as well as a di­rect qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot for the 2027 IHF Men’s U-19 World Cham­pi­onship in Poland.

At the end of the round-robin phase the top two teams in each group will qual­i­fy to the semi­fi­nals while the third place teams meet for the fifth and sixth spot, with the fourth placed teamc clash­ing for the sev­enth spot.

T&T team: Alex­ie Alex­is, Za­y­den Charles, Taal­ib Daniel, Jo­van De­noon (GK), Cordell Ed­wards, Josi­ah Dray­ton, Jer­vais Ed­wards-Carac­ci­o­lo, Do­minic Hen­ry, Ky­mani Her­bert (GK), Raanan Howard, Josi­ah John-An­drew, Zion Roberts, Eli­jah Roberts.

Tech­ni­cal staff: Ken­win Go­den (head coach), De­rice Big­gart (as­sis­tant coach), Stephawn Solomon (as­sis­tant coach), Kern George, head of del­e­ga­tion and safe­guard­ing of­fi­cer.