Lu­ann Craig put on a grand per­for­mance to lift Five Rivers Sec­ondary School to the Mal­ta Girls Un­der-15 Di­vi­sion Trinidad ti­tle in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League.

She sank three goals and helped the East Zone U-15 win­ner Five Rivers de­feat Holy Name Con­vent Port-of-Spain, 8-0 in the fi­nal played at the Bish­op Anstey East ground in Trinci­ty, on Tues­day.

Craig's team­mates al­so pro­duced fan­tas­tic show­ings with cap­tain Kay­la Ba­boolal and Sha­nia Jor­dan each scor­ing a dou­ble while Letisha Morang, net­ted the oth­er item for the cham­pi­on for Five Rivers coached by De­siree Sargeant. Man­ag­er Sylvester San­di­ford sang their prais­es for a job well done by both play­ers and coach­es.

He said, "We start­ed four years ago with our U-19 team. Coach De­siree Sargeant came from St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary and since she reached Fire Rivers Sec­ondary, it has just been up­ward mo­bil­i­ty since. We got pro­mot­ed to Cham­pi­onships two years ago where we came sec­ond last year then we won the In­ter­col.

"This year coach De­siree's plan was to see if we could have won all four East Zone ti­tles and so far she has ac­com­plished three. To­mor­row (to­day) please God, we're go­ing to try to see if we get the fourth one and if we get the na­tion­al U-15 gIrls' ti­tle that would just be gravy on a won­der­ful lunch for the 2019 sea­son.

"Coach De­siree has been ex­cep­tion­al and our as­sis­tant coach Mergil Ros­ales and well me, the man­ag­er, we have worked with these girls. These girls have grown strength-to-strength. We have a cou­ple of ex­cep­tion­al play­ers on the team, again it's a team ef­fort. Yes, we have the likes of Kay­la Ba­boolal, the skip­per of the U-15 team al­so we have Maya Blanc, skip­per of the Cham­pi­onships team, we al­so have Sha­nia Jor­dan, Male­ka Morang, Lu­ann Craig, an ex­cep­tion­al strik­er and Ne­na Grant on the big team.

"We have a lot of things to work on and a lot of things to achieve al­so."

The Trinidad win­ner Five Rivers move on to meet To­ba­go cham­pi­on Sig­nal Hill for the na­tion­al ti­tle card­ed to be played next Thurs­day in To­ba­go. Sig­nal Hill topped the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion to face off for the na­tion­al ti­tle.

To­day the ac­tion on the field will un­fold at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, Ari­ma, with a dou­ble-head­er where the Boys' and Girls' East cham­pi­ons will be crowned in the Co­ca Co­la In­ter­col fi­nals.

San Juan North is hop­ing to sweep the ti­tles. In the open­ing match which kicks off at 1.30 pm, its girls' team will take on Five Rivers and lat­er, the boys' unit will be chal­lenged by St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary from 3.30 pm.

Stu­dents in school uni­form en­try are $20 while adults and stu­dents out of uni­form, $40.

RE­SULTS

Five Rivers 8 (Lu­ann Craig 3, Kay­la Ba­boolal 2, Sha­nia Jor­dan 2, Letisha Morang) vs Holy Name Con­vent 0.

Thurs­day's Match­es

East In­ter­col Fi­nals

Girls: Five Rivers vs San Juan North, 1.30 pm

Boys: San Juan North vs St Au­gus­tine, 3.30 pm