Her com­mu­ni­ty might be con­sid­ered a hotspot, but the on­ly heat for Can­dice Guerero comes out on a net­ball court.

Guerero, 29, was born and raised in Em­ba­cadere in San Fer­nan­do and has been a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­nior Net­ball team for the past ten years.

Her ca­reer start­ed when she tried out for the na­tion­al un­der-21 team at age 19 and was im­me­di­ate­ly draft­ed to the se­nior team.

“I think that I had pro­duced the amount of tal­ent that you would re­quire for the na­tion­al team,” she said.

She start­ed play­ing the sport at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el and cred­its her com­mu­ni­ty for de­vel­op­ing her skills.

“I played every­thing, it didn’t mat­ter if it was school time or not, we were out­side on this baske­ball court (Em­ba­cadere bas­ket­ball court) play­ing bas­ket­ball, play­ing foot­ball, play­ing rounders, you name it; we run­ning, we do­ing every­thing, and I think that had a lot to do with my de­vel­op­ment skills wise.”

Guerero comes from a fam­i­ly of ath­letes; her sis­ter was a na­tion­al bas­ket­baller.

Af­ter sec­ondary school, she got a net­ball schol­ar­ship to The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) where she was made to at­tend na­tion­al train­ing.

Af­ter mak­ing the na­tion­al team she ap­plied to the Fire Ser­vice in 2016 but on­ly got a call four years lat­er and was suc­cess­ful. Now she rep­re­sents both her place of work and her coun­try on the court.

Her sched­ule be­comes hec­tic at times hav­ing to train three times a week for the na­tion­al team while be­ing ful­ly em­ployed. The time off is af­ford­ed to her, though.

Her sport­ing suc­cess as a daugh­ter of the San Fer­nan­do soil al­so fol­lows in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised names such as Golfer Stephen Ames, Olympic Gold Medal­list Hase­ly Craw­ford, and Long-dis­tance run­ner Man­ny Ramjohn.

It hasn’t al­ways been smooth sail­ing for Guerero as her ad­dress has put her in un­com­fort­able sit­u­a­tions at times.

“Pret­ty much you go any­where and ap­ply for a job they may have la­belled you im­me­di­ate­ly be­cause of per­sons that may have com­mit­ted some kind of some­thing be­fore. I think that was the hard­est part of com­ing out of Em­ba­cadere, but again, you can’t just judge a book by its cov­er. Not every­body would be the same be­cause of an area.”

And Can­dice Guerero is no doubt a liv­ing ex­am­ple.