The Akim Tou­s­saint-led T&T se­nior men's hock­ey squad put up a valiant ef­fort be­fore go­ing un­der to USA 4-3 in their Pool B cur­tain-rais­er of the Pan Amer­i­can Cup at the Prince of Wales Coun­try Club, La Reina, San­ti­a­go, Chile, on Thurs­day.

Go­ing in­to the clash against the 24th world-ranked Amer­i­cans, the Dar­ren Cowie-coached “Ca­lyp­so Stick­men” ranked 37th in the world, were con­sid­ered heavy un­der­dogs due to their un­der­whelm­ing prepa­ra­tions for the tour­na­ment which cul­mi­nat­ed with more than half of the team on­ly ar­riv­ing in South Amer­i­ca on Tues­day night, with the last group ar­riv­ing on Wednes­day.

De­spite those set­backs, T&T man­aged to hold the USA at bay for most of the open­ing 15 minute quar­ter.

How­ev­er, in the 12th minute, the USA even­tu­al­ly took the lead via a field goal from Kei Kaep­pel­er, but that was short­lived as Jor­dan Vieira drew T&T lev­el on the stroke of the first quar­ter in­ter­val with a field goal of his own.

The sec­ond pe­ri­od proved to be an even tighter af­fair than the first as both teams failed to add to their tal­ly and went in­to the half-time break still locked at 1-all.

The Amer­i­cans even­tu­al­ly re­stored their one-goal ad­van­tage 12 min­utes in­to the third pe­ri­od thanks to Vin­cent Heller but the spir­it­ed T&T men then hit back with two goals with­in the space of a minute, first­ly via a penal­ty-stroke from Tariq Mar­cano fol­lowed by Joel Daniel to take a shock 3-2 lead.

How­ev­er, the USA caught T&T nap­ping from the restart with Kaep­pel­er tak­ing ad­van­tage of a penal­ty-cor­ner set play to pull his team lev­el at 3-3 go­ing in­to the fi­nal 15-minute quar­ter.

With six min­utes left on the clock, Kaep­pel­er fired in the de­ci­sive item for the USA from the penal­ty spot and de­spite the valiant ef­forts of the T&T men, the score end­ed 4-3 in favour of the Amer­i­cans.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, T&T's Teague Mar­cano said his team­mates could be proud of the ef­fort they put in.

Ear­li­er in the open­ing Pool B match, Cana­da trounced Mex­i­co 11-1 led by a Gor­don John­ston hat-trick to lead the four-team pool on goal dif­fer­ence.

Last night in the lone Pool A match, three-time win­ners Ar­genti­na de­feat­ed Brazil, 10-0, while match­es will re­sume to­mor­row (on Sat­ur­day) with T&T fac­ing Mex­i­co from 1 pm fol­lowed by USA and Cana­da at 4.15 pm and Chile against Ar­genti­na at 5.30 pm.

The men's round-robin phase of the com­pe­ti­tion will con­clude on Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 24) with T&T fac­ing Cana­da from 1 pm fol­lowed by the USA ver­sus Mex­i­co, and Ar­genti­na do­ing bat­tle with Mex­i­co.

At the end of round-robin play, the top team from each pool will ad­vance to the main draw semi­fi­nals on Jan­u­ary 28, while the sec­ond and third-placed teams will meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals to de­ter­mine the oth­er semi­fi­nal qual­i­fiers, two days ear­li­er.

The two semi­fi­nal win­ners will then se­cure the two Pan Amer­i­can spots to the 2023 FIH Odisha World Cup in In­dia.

Jan­u­ary 20 re­sults:

Cana­da 11 (Gor­don John­ston 17th, 33rd, 48th pen, Fin Boothroyd 11th, 19th, Kee­gan Pereira 22nd, Oliv­er Scholfield 26th, James Kirk­patrick 40th, Matthew Sar­men­to 40th, Floris Van Son 44th, Bren­dan Gu­ral­iuk 55th vs Mex­i­co 1 (Jorge Aguilar 52nd)

USA 4 (Kei Kaep­pel­er 12th, 45th, 54th pen,

Vin­cent Heller 42nd) vs T&T 3 (Jor­dan Vieira 15th, Tariq Mar­cano 44th pen, Joel Daniel 45th).

Ar­genti­na 10 (Maico Casel­la 4th, 24th, 29th, 43rd, Jose Toli­ni 9th, Lu­cas Mar­tinez 20th, Nico­las del­la Torre 26th, Tomas Domene 28th, San­ti­a­go Tara­zona 35th, Agustin Bugal­lo 30th) vs Brazil 0.

Re­main­ing sched­ule:

Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 22):

Mex­i­co vs T&T, 2 pm

USA vs Cana­da, 4.15 pm

Chile vs Ar­genti­na, 5.30 pm

Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 24):

Cana­da vs T&T, 2 pm

Mex­i­co vs USA, 4.15 pm

Brazil vs Chile, 5.30 pm

Wednes­day (Jan­u­ary 26):

Cross-Over quar­ter­fi­nals:

2nd Pool A vs 3rd Pool B, 3 pm

2nd Pool B vs 3rd Pool A, 5.30 pm

Jan­u­ary 28:

5th to 6th play­off, 12.30 pm

Semi­fi­nals: 3 pm & 5.30 pm

Jan­u­ary 30:

Third place and Fi­nal play­offs, 1.30 pm & 4 pm