Nigel Si­mon

Dr Pa­tri­cia Butch­er, pres­i­dent of the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA), says the lo­cal as­so­ci­a­tion may have to re­view its own re­cruit­ing and se­lec­tion of youth play­ers for na­tion­al teams in the fu­ture.

This fol­lows a dis­ap­point­ing sixth-placed fin­ish by the na­tion­al Un­der-16 team at the Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Jean Pierre Youth (U-16) Cham­pi­onship at the Vigie Mul­ti-Pur­pose Sports Com­plex, Cas­tries, St Lu­cia, on Thurs­day night, with a 1�5 record.

The lone win for T&T young­sters, coached by for­mer na­tion­al stand­outs and cap­tains in Janalle Bark­er and Lystra Solomon-Sim­mons, came against min­nows, Bermu­da 20�9.

How­ev­er, the young "Ca­lyp­so net­ballers" who al­so end­ed in fifth po­si­tion last year when the tour­na­ment was held in An­tigua & Bar­bu­da were beat­en by Grena­da (23�17), St Vin­cent and The Grenadines (22�14), Do­mini­ca (21�18), even­tu­al cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos (26�21) and in their fi­nal match against 2011 win­ners, and host St Lu­cia, 30�14.

Reached for com­ment, Bouch­er, who is al­so the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA) pres­i­dent, ad­mit­ted she would have love to see much bet­ter re­sults from the team than what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened.

She added: "Go­ing in­to the tour­na­ment I knew the coach­es and the team put in a lot of work, but maybe our start time of prepa­ra­tions which be­gan last No­vem­ber was not ear­ly enough."

With re­gards to the team's per­for­mances and the way for­ward, Bouch­er said the lo­cal fed­er­a­tion of­fi­cials charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the na­tion­al teams will first have to meet with the tech­ni­cal staff of the Un­der-16 what tran­spired in St Lu­cia and what needs to be done for us to im­prove.

"One of our shoot­ers (Tiana Dil­lon) was the top in­di­vid­ual shoot­er in the com­pe­ti­tion while in the team com­pe­ti­tion we were sec­ond to Bar­ba­dos, so we need to know why we need to de­ter­mine why this same type of shoot­ing did not tran­spired in our match­es, and what was the rea­sons for not ex­e­cut­ing the way we should," stat­ed Bouch­er.

Asked if she be­lieves the re­cruit­ing and scout­ing process used by the T&TNA was at fault, Bouch­er said it is a ques­tion they have to ask them­selves as well.

"We had an Un­der-16 iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tal­ent tour­na­ment where the coach­es were able to get a look at the play­ers from all over T&T, but maybe we need to spread out net much wider.

She added: "Maybe we al­so pay much clos­er at­ten­tion as well to re­cruit­ing taller play­ers from a young age, be­cause when we get to the se­nior like, you see the teams like Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Ja­maica and Eng­land, all dom­i­nate main­ly through hav­ing play­ers who are just not fit­ter and more ath­let­ic, but way taller than us."

"I'm bot sure if this was a fac­tor at the youth tour­na­ment in St Lu­cia, but is some­thing I think we need to play clos­er at­ten­tion at," end­ed Bouch­er.

Hav­ing al­ready cap­tured the ti­tle, its third over­all and sec­ond in four years, Bar­ba­dos end­ed with a 6�0 record and 30 points by whip­ping St Vin­cent and The Grenadines, 36�11, while Do­mini­ca pipped Bermu­da, 21�20 for sec­ond spot with a 3-1-2 mark and 20 points, the same as Grena­da, but with a bet­ter goal-dif­fer­ence.

T&T's best ever fin­ish at the tour­na­ment was run­ner-up in 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2008, all to ten-time cham­pi­ons Ja­maica, which opt­ed not to de­fend its ti­tle this year.