T&T's Un­der-21 women's hock­ey team got its first win in Pool One of the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Chal­lenge in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos Tues­day by edg­ing the host na­tion Bar­ba­dos 2-1.

Af­ter an open­ing match de­mo­li­tion 8-0 to Mex­i­co on Sat­ur­day and then a 13-0 loss to Puer­to Ri­co, the fol­low­ing day, the "Ca­lyp­so Stick­women" need­ed to win to keep their chances alive in the tour­na­ment with on­ly the top two teams in the pool ad­vanc­ing past the group stage.

The Robyn Dash-led T&T team re­spond­ed ac­cord­ing­ly when Nata­nia Rowe pushed her team ahead af­ter just the 13th minute of the open­ing pe­ri­od 1-0 from the field at the Sir Garfield Sobers Sports Com­plex Hock­ey Cen­tre in Wildey, Bridgetown.

The goal left a pe­ri­od of deaf­en­ing si­lence with the home­team al­so go­ing down to a heavy de­feat in their first match 6-0 to a pow­er­ful Puer­to Ri­can out­fit. How­ev­er, the home team, cheered on by their fans tried again for a re­bound­ed, on­ly for the wind to be tak­en out of their sails a sec­ond time, sev­en min­utes lat­er.

The goal, com­ing from a penal­ty cor­ner was lashed in by Robyn Dash af­ter the 20th minute, en­abling the women in red, white and black the chance to cel­e­brate an­oth­er time in the en­counter. The T&T women touched down in the land of the fly­ing fish late Fri­day night and were forced to take the field the fol­low­ing day against a fine-tuned Mex­i­can team with­out hav­ing a train­ing ses­sion to pre­pare.

But yes­ter­day, three days af­ter coach Kristin Thomp­son and her charges had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare, the ear­ly ad­van­tage point­ed to the im­pact of their late ar­rival and sub­se­quent ear­ly en­counter, which fol­lowed lit­tle to no prepa­ra­tion.

Still, they were far from fin­ished as the home team bat­tled to re­duce the score­line. In the 36th minute, they were re­ward­ed for their hard work when Sterre De Kon­ing fired the ball past the T&T goal­keep­er from a sim­i­lar penal­ty cor­ner for a fi­nal score of 2-1.

The Ca­lyp­so Stick­women will now at­tempt to re­fo­cus when they face Guatemala in their fourth match to­day at 10 am and lat­er take on Guyana to con­clude the group on Fri­day at the same venue.

Mean­while, the T&T un­der-21 men will spring in­to ac­tion to­day against Guatemala.