Goal shoot Maikea Bram­ble and cap­tain and goal at­tack Kali­fa Mc­Collin com­bined to great ef­fect to lead Trinidad and To­ba­go's 'Ca­lyp­so Girls’—to a con­vinc­ing 60-51 vic­to­ry over host Bar­ba­dos to bring the cur­tain down on the eight-team Net­ball World Cup Syd­ney 2027 Amer­i­c­as Qual­i­fiers on Mon­day night.

Go­ing in­to the fi­nal match of the tour­na­ment, the Liselle John­son-coached Ca­lyp­so Girls were al­ready as­sured of one of the two qual­i­fi­ca­tion spots for next year's Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, af­ter a per­fect 6-0 start at the Sir Garfield Sobers Sports Com­plex, Bridgetown, St. Michael, Bar­ba­dos.

On the oth­er hand, for host Bar­ba­dos, it was more about putting on a good per­for­mance to bring their dis­ap­point­ing cam­paign to an end af­ter ear­li­er de­feats at the hands of the USA and St. Vin­cent and The Grenadines dashed their hopes of join­ing the Ca­lyp­so Girls on the plane to 'Down Un­der.'

From the on­set, Bram­ble and Mc­Collin sig­naled their in­ten­tions to in­flict a third de­feat on the host when they hand­ed T&T a 15-10 lead at the end of the first 15-minute quar­ter, with Bram­ble scor­ing ten of 11 at­tempts and Mc­Collin five of six, while goal shoot­er Fayey Agard scored on all eight of her at­tempts for the Ba­jans, with sub­sti­tute goal at­tack Kadeen Corbin chip­ping in with two from as many at­tempts.

The sec­ond quar­ter saw T&T ex­tend their lead to 32-22 af­ter dom­i­nat­ing the pe­ri­od, 17-12, led by Bram­ble.

She shot eight of ten times, and Mc­Collin had a per­fect nine goals, with Agard con­tin­u­ing to lead the charge for the host as she added 11 goals from 13 at­tempts, and Corbin had one from two at­tempts.

The third quar­ter was a much clos­er con­test, with T&T edg­ing the Bar­ba­di­ans 16-14 to widen their lead by two goals, 48-35, be­hind Bram­ble's nine-of-ten shoot­ing and ef­fi­cient Mc­Collin with sev­en from sev­en at­tempts.

On the oth­er end of the court, Agard con­tin­ued to en­joy a pro­duc­tive night against the T&T de­fend­ers with a per­fect 13 goals from 13 at­tempts, and Corbin scored the oth­er goal from her lone ef­fort in the quar­ter.

With vic­to­ry all but se­cured, T&T took their foot off the gas in the fi­nal pe­ri­od while the Bar­ba­di­ans, urged on by their home sup­port­ers, tried as best as pos­si­ble to close the gap.

In the end, the Bar­ba­di­ans play­ing in front of their fans were re­ward­ed with a fi­nal quar­ter win, 16-12, but it did lit­tle to damp­en the Ca­lyp­so Girls' spir­it as they end­ed with a per­fect sev­en wins from sev­en match­es to top the qual­i­fiers and con­tin­ue their im­pres­sive run af­ter claim­ing the gold medal at the Ju­ly/Au­gust held Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CA) Games, which were held in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

For T&T, Bram­ble, who once again in place of the rest­ed Eng­land-based Samath­an Wal­lace-Joseph, scored one of 11 at­tempts to end with 36 goals from 43 at­tempts. while Mc­Collin net­ted her three at­tempts to fin­ish the con­test with 24 goals from 25 at­tempts.

Agard led all scor­ers in the quar­ter with 14 goals from 15 at­tempts, as well as on the night with 46 goals from 49 at­tempts in a los­ing ef­fort, with Corbin adding one from three at­tempts to fin­ish with five from eight on the night.

The Ca­lyp­so Girls will re­turn home at 7 pm tonight and will now shift fo­cus and prepa­ra­tions to­wards the 2027 Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, from Au­gust 25 to Sep­tem­ber 5, 2027, for their 16th ap­pear­ance in the last 17 edi­tions, where they will be joined by tour­na­ment run­ners-up St. Vin­cent and The Grenadines, which will be mak­ing a re­turn to the World Cup for the first time in over 20 years.

The Amer­i­c­as qual­i­fiers com­plet­ed the re­gion­al qual­i­fiers with the hosts, Aus­tralia; Com­mon­wealth Games gold medal­ists, New Zealand; and run­ners-up, Ja­maica, Eng­land, South Africa, Ugan­da, Ton­ga, Samoa, Malawi, Namib­ia, North­ern Ire­land, Scot­land, Sin­ga­pore, Hong Kong, and Chi­na al­ready qual­i­fied.

In Mon­day's oth­er ear­ly match­es, the USA pound­ed win­less British Vir­gin Is­lands 80-6 to end in the third spot with a 5-2 record and 15 points; Cana­da edged Grena­da 42-40 to fin­ish with a 3-4 record in the fifth spot with nine points, while St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines held off a spir­it­ed ef­fort from St. Lu­cia in a 55-53 vic­to­ry to ce­ment their hold on the run­ner-up spot as they se­cured their tick­et to the Net­ball World Cup

Fi­nal stand­ings:

Teams P W D L GF GA GD Pts

1. T&T 7 7 0 0 466 259 207 21

2. SVG 7 6 0 1 414 323 91 18

3. USA 7 5 0 2 372 247 125 15

4. Bar­ba­dos 7 4 0 3 380 287 93 12

5. Cana­da 7 3 0 4 287 300 -13 9

6. St Lu­cia7 2 0 5 312 283 29 6

7. Grena­da 7 1 0 6 309 390 -81 3

8. BVI 7 0 0 7 107 558 -451 0