“Move! Jump! Push your­self! This is what you call high in­ten­si­ty!”

Words di­rect­ed at the se­nior na­tion­al net­ballers as they en­gaged in a high-in­ten­si­ty drill on Wednes­day evening, ful­ly aware of the tough as­sign­ments that lay ahead of them in Ja­maica at the up­com­ing Tri-Se­ries.

The 15 play­ers, in­clud­ing re­cent­ly re­turned in­ter­na­tion­al Kali­fa Mc­Collin, who will co-cap­tain the “Ca­lyp­so Girls” along with fel­low pro­fes­sion­al net­baller Saman­tha Wal­lace, were at the time train­ing un­der the in­struc­tions of na­tion­al coach Althea Mc­Collin, Kali­fa’s moth­er, with the sup­port of as­sis­tant coach Kem­ba Dun­can at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na.

The lo­cal net­ballers are prepar­ing to take on the Ja­maican “Sun­shine Girls” and South Africa from Oc­to­ber 9-16 which forms part of their prepa­ra­tion for the Birm­ing­ham 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games in Eng­land.

Wal­lace ar­rived in T&T that morn­ing, fol­low­ing her fifth sea­son with the New South Wales Swifts, the reign­ing cham­pi­on of the Sun­corp Su­per Net­ball (SSN) League. The Swifts’ “Most Valu­able Play­er” (MVP), is cur­rent­ly un­der a 14-day quar­an­tine af­ter re­cent­ly re­ceiv­ing her sec­ond dose COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion and is set to join the team just ahead of a lo­cal camp from Oc­to­ber 1 ac­cord­ing to man­ag­er Ashelle Legall.

Se­nior na­tion­al net­ball coach Althea Mc­Collin, Kali­fa’s moth­er, was quite vo­cal at the ses­sion, try­ing to get the team ready.”Be ex­plo­sive, keep go­ing. We will be do­ing the same thing to­mor­row (Thurs­day),” con­tin­ued Mc­Collin to her play­ers, get­ting them to push a lit­tle hard­er on the court be­tween the train­ing cones set up for the pass­ing drill.

“Clap it out!” said Mc­Collin to her play­ers as they end­ed. “When you work hard, ap­pre­ci­ate your­self.”

Their hard work earned them a wa­ter break, so they head­ed off the court to the sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tion set up by COVID li­ai­son of­fi­cer Olivia Le Plat­te, who is re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing all play­ers and staff’s tem­per­a­ture and sani­tis­ing the balls, mats, all sur­faces etc, to­wards the pre­ven­tion against the spread of the coro­n­avirus, de­spite all ac­tive play­ers and staff in train­ing, be­ing ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

On Wednes­day, the group were split in­to two groups with Mc­Collin work­ing with the at­tack and Dun­can, a for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er, work­ing with the de­fen­sive unit. Yes­ter­day (Thurs­day), the coach­ing would have got­ten to see how the team pro­gressed on both ends against a team that in­clud­ed men’s play­ers ac­cord­ing to Mc­Collin.

“Every Thurs­day the team plays a prac­tice match so we can ob­serve them in-game sit­u­a­tions,” said Mc­Collin and on hav­ing her ex­pe­ri­enced daugh­ter Kali­fa as part of the unit: “Hav­ing her here is great. The play­ers are learn­ing a lot from Kali­fa. We, the coach­es, are learn­ing from her as well. She has a lot to con­tribute and we are all open and will­ing to re­ceive it.”

Kali­fa made her de­but this sea­son in the SSN, com­pet­ing with the Colling­wood Mag­pies. This af­ter play­ing three sea­sons in the Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Su­per­league in Eng­land, two sea­sons with the Celtic Drag­ons and one with the benecos­Mav­er­icks

 “We want to go to Ja­maica not just to par­tic­i­pate but we re­al­ly want to com­pete,” said a straight­for­ward Kali­fa.

“The in­ten­si­ty in train­ing is great and the girls are adapt­ing well as they have in­tro­duced some youth in­to the squad and they are gelling well with ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers.”

She brought the en­er­gy and her ath­leti­cism dur­ing both the work­out and the game ses­sion to close off Wednes­day’s prac­tice of­fi­ci­at­ed by um­pire Joel Young-Strong, who is the Over­sight.

Kali­fa, a goal-at­tack spe­cial­ist, did what she does best, moved pur­pose­ly in and around the cir­cle feed­ing her goal-shoot­er Afeisha Noel the ball and in one pos­ses­sion, she slipped by her de­fend­er to col­lect a pass near the goal from Noel, which in turn she com­plet­ed to the de­light of her team­mates.  All aimed at get­ting it right for the Tri-Se­ries. The team is sched­uled to leave on Oc­to­ber 6.

Team:

Saman­tha Wal­lace (co-cap­tain), Kali­fa Mc­Collin (co-cap­tain), Jameela Mc­Carthy, Afeisha Noel, Oprah Dou­glas, Tia Bruno, Janeisha Cas­simy, Des­tiny Williams, Shaquan­da Greene-Noel, Ane­i­cia Bap­tiste, Crys­tal-Ann George, Jere­sia McEachrane.

Tech­ni­cal staff

Althea Mc Collin (coach), Kem­ba Dun­can (as­sis­tant coach), Ashelle Legall (man­ag­er), Jevon Fon­cette (phys­io­ther­a­pist), Dr Liza Mo­han-Watts (psy­chol­o­gist), Demitri Vil­lo­re­al (mas­sage ther­a­pist), Olivia La Plat­te (COVID li­ai­son of­fi­cer), An­gel Ot­t­ley (train­er), Joel Young-Strong (Over­sight).

Sched­ule

Oct 9: Ja­maica vs T&T, 6 pm

Oct 11: T&T vs South Africa, 6 pm

Oct 13: Ja­maica vs T&T, 6 pm

Oct 16: South Africa vs T&T, 6 pm