In­spired by the shoot­ing con­sis­ten­cy of Eng­lish-based goal shoot­er Saman­tha Wal­lace-Joseph, Trinidad and To­ba­go bat­tled to a 62-35 vic­to­ry over re­gion­al ri­val St Lu­cia when the ac­tion con­tin­ued in the Amer­i­c­as Net­ball World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the Sir Garfield Sobers Sports Com­plex in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

The win al­so en­sured that the ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls’, as they are com­mon­ly called, main­tained their un­beat­en record in five match­es in the tour­na­ment, which keeps them well on course for one of two places for the Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia next year.

Wal­lace-Joseph de­liv­ered a near-per­fect eight goals from nine at­tempts to push the ad­van­tage in T&T’s favour at the end of the open­ing quar­ter, 12-9, while an equal­ly tal­ent­ed goal at­tack, Kali­fa Mc­Collins, record­ed a one hun­dred per cent four from four con­tri­bu­tion that saw her warm up to her show­er more goals in the re­main­der of the match.

The St Lu­cians, led by the dogged fight­back from Nai­ja Fer­di­nand in the sec­ond ses­sion, added just six more points to their tal­ly, with Fer­di­nand hit­ting a flaw­less four goals from as many tries. Still, they were made to trail 27-15, as Wal­lace-Joseph im­proved her ac­cu­ra­cy in the sec­ond stan­za, with a 12-from-12 per­for­mance that was sup­port­ed by Mc­Collins three goals from five at­tempts that sum­marised the mood of the T&T team, which had gone four games with­out a de­feat so far.

Still, the St Lu­cians were un­daunt­ed by the tenac­i­ty of the Trin­bag­o­ni­ans as Fer­di­nand sol­diered on with six more goals to her tal­ly, while Dasha Eu­gene chipped in with five from nine in a quar­ter that was snapped up by the com­bi­na­tion of Wal­lace-Joseph, Mc­Collins and com­pa­ny.

Mean­while, the en­try of Maikea Bram­ble in the fi­nal quar­ter proved worth the while, as her com­bi­na­tion with Wal­lace-Joseph and Mc­Collins on­ly served to add salt in­to the wounds of the St Lu­cians. Wal­lace, con­sid­ered one of the coun­try’s bet­ter play­ers, closed her chap­ter in the match with a per­fect five goals from five for a to­tal of 37 goals from 39 at­tempts, with Mc­Collins amass­ing 19 goals in her 21 at­tempts.

T&T is sta­tioned at the top of the eight-team stand­ings with 15 points, with the home team in the sec­ond po­si­tion with nine points, the same as ST Vin­cent and the Unit­ed States.

T&T will not be in ac­tion to­day; how­ev­er, the St Lu­cians will take the court again against the USA from 2 pm.

Mean­while, on Fri­day, the Bar­ba­dos Gems suf­fered a set­back in their bid to snag one of the two qual­i­fy­ing spots on of­fer when they were stunned 43-41 by the USA to suf­fer their first de­feat of the tour­na­ment.

Need­ing a win over USA to so­lid­i­fy their chances of fin­ish­ing in the top two, Bar­ba­dos would have been favourites af­ter win­ning their first three match­es.

How­ev­er, the USA pro­duced a gut­sy per­for­mance to keep their qual­i­fi­ca­tion hopes alive, with both teams hav­ing sim­i­lar 3-1 records.

In the day’s oth­er ear­ly match, St. Vin­cent and The Grenadines thrashed the British Vir­gin Is­lands 91-13, led by 71 goals from 74 at­tempts from Mary-Ann Fred­er­ick.

With Sat­ur­day's re­sults, T&T is the on­ly un­beat­en team in the com­pe­ti­tion, with three games re­main­ing.