Clay­ton Clarke

Trinidad and To­ba­go ath­letes failed to get among the medals at the 9th North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (NACAC) Cross Coun­try Cham­pi­onships held at the Man­ches­ter Golf Club, Man­dev­ille, Ja­maica on Sat­ur­day.

Tonya Nero was the best lo­cal fin­ish­er tak­ing eleventh spot in the women's 6K event in 22:52. Nero was sec­ond in last year's race held at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, and was this coun­try's best hope for a medal.

Nero had gold in her sights but was out-paced by her North Amer­i­can ri­vals. Cana­di­ans Natasha Fras­er (21.07) and Rachel Cliff (21.35) took the top two spots with Bev­er­ly Ramos of Puer­to Ri­co (21.48) in third.

The NAAA's most out­stand­ing fe­male cross coun­try and road run­ner for 2012, was the top re­gion­al fin­ish­er and was the lone T&T fe­male to make the trip to Ja­maica. Cana­da took the team ti­tle ahead of the USA, Puer­to Ri­co and Ja­maica.

In the men's 8K event, Richard Jones was the best lo­cal cross­ing the line in 17th (27.22). He was ahead of Matthew Ha­gley (20th-27.55), Jules La Rode (22nd-28:34), two-time na­tion­al cham­pi­on Den­zil Ramirez (23rd-28:45) and Kendis Bullard (25th-30:06). La Rode had the ho­n­our of com­pet­ing in his sixth NACAC cham­pi­onship. De­fend­ing cham­pi­on Cameron Levins of Cana­da was beat­en in­to sec­ond (24:47) by Amer­i­can Forys Craig (24:46). An­oth­er Cana­di­an Kel­ly Wiebe took third (25:04). Bermu­da's La­m­ont Mar­shall was the top Caribbean fin­ish­er (15th-26:55). The lo­cal men missed out a team medal tak­ing fourth place be­hind the USA, Cana­da and Ja­maica.

In the ju­nior men's 6K, na­tion­al cham­pi­on Akeem Mar­shall led the lo­cal con­tin­gent fin­ish­ing 24th (21:32) with mul­ti­ple Carif­ta gold medal­list Mark Lon­don (26th-21:43), Jevon Joseph (29th-23:13), Ash­ton Gill (30th-23:13) and Ra­mario Ro­driguez (32nd-24:00) fol­low­ing be­hind. Mex­i­cans Edgar Gar­cia (19:10) and Vic­tor Mon­tanez (19:16) fin­ished first and third with Es­te­van de La Rosa of the USA (19:13) in sec­ond. Host run­ner Her­bert Thomas was the best placed among the Caribbean run­ners (17th-20:29). T&T was fifth in the team race be­hind Cana­da, USA, Puer­to Ri­co and Ja­maica.

T&T had no en­trants in the ju­nior women's 4K race.The na­tion­al con­tin­gent was set to re­turn home yes­ter­day.