The re­main­der of T&T’s se­nior men and women’s teams will leave for the 2019 Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North (RAN) Sev­ens Tour­na­ment in the Cay­man Is­lands on Thurs­day. Half of the con­tin­gent left on Wednes­day.

The tour­na­ment this year will be a qual­i­fi­er for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

The men, who are be­ing led by Leon Pan­tor, will at­tempt to earn a qual­i­fy­ing berth with­out the ser­vices of reg­u­lar coach Lar­ry Mendez, who is in the Unit­ed States on a coach­ing in­tern­ship pro­gramme. Mendez was re­placed by in­ter­im coach Fe­li­cian Guer­ra, who told the me­dia his team is hyped and rar­ing to go. Ac­cord­ing to Fe­li­cian, the play­ers have re­spond­ed well to his meth­ods and are ready to show all their prepa­ra­tion was not in vain.

Mean­while, the women’s team is coached by Carl­ton Fe­lix and will be led by Kath­leen Stephens. Fe­lix said in a re­lease on Tues­day that his charges are ready to show that their sec­ond-place fin­ish at the 2018 RAN Sev­ens com­pe­ti­tion and sub­se­quent qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru, was no fluke.

He not­ed his team in­tends to go one bet­ter and win the tour­na­ment this year. T&T Rug­by Foot­ball Union (TTR­FU) pres­i­dent Col­in Pe­ters, who on Tues­day com­mend­ed the ef­forts of the staff at the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T and Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs for the per­sis­tence shown to en­sure funds were ready for his teams, al­so thanked T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis and for­mer TTR­FU pres­i­dent Leslie Fi­garo for the sup­port shown for him.

Pe­ters said: “It is im­por­tant to note that in these dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial times, we can still count on the gov­ern­ment of the coun­try to sup­port the Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs) in their quest to bring sport­ing glo­ry to T&T.”

MEN’S TEAM

Nigel Balling­ton, Sha­keel Dyte, Shakir Flem­ming, Jahreem George, An­tho­ny Forde, Christo­pher Hud­son, Em­manuel Joseph, Akeem Leben, Leon Pan­tor (cap­tain), Joshua Seechan, Ag­boola Sil­ver­thorn, Jonathan Tay­lor.

Fe­li­cian Guer­ra (In­ter­im Coach), Jer­ry Le­gal (Asst Coach), Cur­tis Nero (Man­ag­er), Je­lani Bap­tiste (Phys­io­ther­a­pist)

WOMEN

Ap­phia Glas­gow, Fay­ola Jack, Kwanieze John, Leah Kin­ti­ba, Mari­ka Mendez, Aqiy­la O’Brien, Car­li­na Phillip, Kath­leen Stephens (cap­tain), Blos­som Stew­art, Maria Thomas, Kan­isha Vin­cent, Chris­tine Wal­cott.

Carl­ton Fe­lix (Coach), Kel­son Fi­garo (Asst Coach), Je­nilee Li­ma­da (Man­ag­er), Dalia Jor­dan-Brown (Med­ical Doc­tor), Derek Ash­by-Williams (Mas­sage Ther­a­pist).