Nicholas Clarke

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) Ephraim Ser­rette said he was dis­ap­point­ed with T&T's show­ing at the Pan Amer­i­can Ju­nior Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Ed­mon­ton, Cana­da over the week­end.The team won three medals at the meet, in­clud­ing gold for Khal­i­fa St Forte in the Women's 100m, sil­ver for Por­tious War­ren in the Women's Shot Put and bronze for the Men's 4x100m team of Fran­cis Louis, Joash Hug­gins, Corey Stew­art and Nathan Far­in­ha.

The haul was less than the two golds and three sil­vers the coun­try picked up dur­ing its last ap­pear­ance at the cham­pi­onships in Mi­ra­mar, Flori­da, USA in 2011.Speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day, Ser­rette felt the ath­letes were ca­pa­ble of bet­ter.

"The over­all per­for­mance was mediocre. We had greater ex­pec­ta­tions from the team," he said. "It was hin­dered by the ab­sence of Akan­ni His­lop, Jonathan Far­in­ha and Joshua St Clair, who were in­jured but you would hope for ath­letes to step up their per­for­mances when com­pet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. In some cas­es, they did worse than they did at the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships."

Ser­rette did cred­it the medal win­ners for for their ef­forts."The Men's 4x100m re­lay team did well to win bronze though I felt the fe­male re­lay team should have medalled as well. Khal­i­fa St Forte con­tin­ues to prove she is one for fu­ture and I was very sat­is­fied by Por­tious War­ren throw­ing a per­son­al best to win sil­ver."

T&T's 4x100m quar­tet of Louis, Hug­gins, Stew­art and Far­in­ha closed the meet on Sun­day night with a bronze in its fi­nal. The four­some clocked 40.50 to fin­ish be­hind Ja­maica's Seanie Selvin, Shiv­nar­ine Small­ing, Hu­jaye Corn­wall and Xan­dre Blake, who took gold in 40.15, while Ba­hamas's Ja­van Mar­tin, Janeko Cartwright, Ian Kerr and Kendrick Thomp­son were run­ners up in 40.32.

T&T's fe­male 4x100m team nar­row­ly missed out on a spot on the podi­um when it fin­ished fourth in its fi­nal. Jael Fer­gus­son, Jem­i­nise Par­ris, Jen­dayi Noel and Khal­i­fa St Forte put to­geth­er a time of 47.11, which was be­hind USA (43.79), Ja­maica (44.31) and Ba­hamas (45.96).In oth­er events, Omari Benoit was tenth in the Men's High Jump af­ter be­ing elim­i­nat­ed at the 1.95 mark. Amer­i­can Ran­dall Cun­ning­ham won the event in 2.16m.

Kene­ja Williams al­so man­aged tenth in his event, the Men's Shot Put, with a throw of 16.45m on his first at­tempt. The field was topped by Amer­i­can John Mau­rins with a 19.49m ef­fort.

At the 2011 edi­tion in Mi­ra­mar, Flori­da, Michelle Lee Ahye (Women's 100m) and El­ton Wal­cott (Men's Triple Jump) won their events while De­on Lendore (Men's 400m), Kai Selvon (Women's 200m) and the Men's 4x400m team (Lendore, Machel Ce­de­nio, Jereem Richards and Mori­ba Morain) bagged sil­vers.