Shari John

?T&T U-20 So­ca Princess­es suf­fered a tough 4-0 de­feat to a men's U-15 squad yes­ter­day, at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va, in a prac­tice match or­ga­nized to aid both teams with prepa­ra­tions for their re­spec­tive up­com­ing tour­na­ments. The U-20 women are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for the Con­ca­caf Fi­nal Round Tour­na­ment from Jan­u­ary 19-30 in Guatemala, where they will vie for a spot in the Fi­fa U-20 Women's World Cup in Au­gust, while the U-15 men are in the process of se­lect­ing a fi­nal team for the Youth Olympics in Sin­ga­pore, al­so in Au­gust of this year. The U-15 men, coached by Shawn Coop­er, had an ob­vi­ous edge in terms of ath­leti­cism and speed but the So­ca Princess­es, who have adopt­ed a more ag­gres­sive style of play, com­pet­ed well, where at­tack­ing was con­cerned and were in no way in­tim­i­dat­ed by the strength of their op­po­nents, with the re­sult be­ing a very phys­i­cal en­counter.

Shaquille Hen­ry, who man­aged to thread his way through the U-20 de­fence with sub­stan­tial ease through­out the match, scored two of the U-15s goals, with Ja­mal Williams net­ting one and Camille Bor­neo scor­ing an own goal af­ter a failed at­tempt at clear­ance. The U-20s were forced to play with­out their skip­per Mari­ah Shade, who is nurs­ing a ham­string in­jury, and Kay­la Tay­lor, who has been ill for the past three days. The match was played in three parts of 30-min­utes in or­der to al­low all of the U-15s time on the pitch. Speak­ing af­ter the match, U-20 coach, Ja­maal Shabazz ex­plained that a vic­to­ry for his team, was not nec­es­sar­i­ly the score at the end of the game, but see­ing his team im­ple­ment what it has been learn­ing in prac­tice.

"It was al­ways go­ing to be a tough ex­er­cise but we saw bits and pieces of what we have been do­ing in train­ing, said Shabazz. "It's al­ways tough play­ing against boys but it's just the kind of work out we need to as­sess the work we've done and we are sat­is­fied that the team is play­ing a lot more com­pact, but we still have a lot of work to do in terms of tran­si­tion, when we win the ball." As it re­lates to his first match against Mex­i­co in the Con­ca­caf Fi­nal just three weeks away, Shabazz said that while his team is a long way from be­ing pre­pared, he be­lieves that three weeks is enough time to get them there. "Mex­i­co has nev­er been a team to de­mor­al­ize us, al­though they are a cou­ple steps up the lad­der, it's more of us get­ting fit and hav­ing the right at­ti­tude and putting to­geth­er a game plan." The team broke from camp yes­ter­day and will re­group to­mor­row un­til Wednes­day, be­fore leav­ing for Cos­ta Ri­ca at a date to be an­nounced.