Nigel Si­mon

T&T's se­nior women's hock­ey team have been drawn in a rel­a­tive­ly tough Pool B for the FIH World Hock­ey League Round Two qual­i­fiers set for Mon­te­v­ideo, Uruguay from Feb­ru­ary 14 to 22.

The lo­cal squad which will be with­out no few­er tha nine key play­ers will meet world 19th ranked Azer­bai­jan in their open­er be­fore on Feb­ru­ary 14 be­fore fac­ing off with 37th ranked Kenya (Feb­ru­ary 15) and 24th ranked France on Feb­ru­ary 17 to end round-robin play. Pool A will fea­ture, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (#52), Italy (#17), Mex­i­co (#28) and Uruguay (#31)

With the tour­na­ment be­ing an eight-team af­fair, all par­tic­i­pants have al­ready qual­i­fied for the cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals from which the win­ners will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals, and then the cham­pi­onship and bronze medal en­coun­ters.

From this tour­na­ment, the top two teams will qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly for Round 3 which is the Se­mi-Fi­nals of the FIH Hock­ey World League, which are due to be played in Va­len­cia, Spain from June 10th to 21st, 2015 and Antwerp, Bel­gium from June 20th to Ju­ly 5th, 2015. An ad­di­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot may al­so be avail­able to the third place fin­ish­ing team de­pend­ing on its rank­ing and the rank­ings of the oth­er teams that fin­ish 3rd in oth­er Round 2 tour­na­ments be­ing held in Del­hi, In­dia and Dublin, Ire­land

On a pos­i­tive note, Mar­cano will have the ser­vices of a few ex­pe­ri­ence heads in Krizia Layne, Petal Der­ry, Bri­an­na Govia, Brit­tney Hingh, Oire Trot­man, Aime Olton, Kay­la Brath­waite, Blair Wynne and co-cap­tains Alan­na Lewis and Pa­tri­cia Wright-Aleix­is while the rest of the team will com­prise mem­bers of the na­tion­al Un­der-21 squad who are prepar­ing for the Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship next year.

Women's team mem­bers

Alan­na Lewis (Co-cap­tain), Pa­tri­cia Wright-Alex­is (Co-cap­tain), Sa­van­nah De Fre­itas, Chelsea Dey, Amie Olton, Saman­tha Olton, Kay­la Brath­waite, Bri­an­na Govia, Brit­tney Hingh, Oire Trot­man, Fiona O'Brien, Gabrielle Thomp­son, Jes­si­ca Lee, Lisa Smith, Petal Der­ry (GK), Ar­resia Sandy (GK), Blair Wynne and Krizia Layne.

Women's team tech­ni­cal staff: An­tho­ny Mar­cano (Head Coach), Val­isha Sylvester (Team Man­ag­er), Nicholas Baldeosingh (Video­g­ra­ph­er), Kem­ba Noel-Lon­don (Phys­io­ther­a­pist) and Dr Tim­o­thy Ho­sein (Team Doc­tor).