T&T se­nior women’s hock­ey team coach An­tho­ny “Bumper” Mar­cano will be hop­ing his team can break a two-match win­less run to de­feat Paraguay in their semi­fi­nal match at the 2021 Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge on Fri­day from 2 pm.

In ad­di­tion to reach­ing the tour­na­ment fi­nal on Sun­day, the win­ner of to­day’s semi­fi­nal at the Vil­la Maria del Tri­un­fo Pan Amer­i­can Com­plex, Li­ma will earn one of the two au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion spots to next year’s Pan Am Cup which will serve as the re­gion’s FIH World Cup qual­i­fi­er as well as a spot in the Pan Amer­i­can Games.

To­day’s match-up be­tween the 57th ranked ‘Ca­lyp­so Stick­women' who end­ed sec­ond in the four-team round-robin se­ries and 60th ranked Paraguay, third-placed fin­ish­ers, will be their sec­ond in four days.

This was af­ter T&T got a last-minute equalis­er from Zene Hen­ry in a 2-2 draw in their round-robin du­el af­ter tak­ing the lead in the sec­ond-half cour­tesy Brit­tney Hingh of a close­ly fought con­test on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 28.

Speak­ing ahead of his team’s semi­fi­nal Mar­cano said his team will have their work to do against a plucky Paraguay line-up.

He said, “We have our work to do and de­vise a strat­e­gy that we think will give us the up­per hand in the semis.

“The ladies are well aware of the im­por­tance of this game for our women's pro­gram and this is a heavy bur­den to car­ry.

“We will try to play good dis­ci­plined hock­ey and look for­ward to a pos­i­tive re­sult.

Re­flect­ing on their three match­es to date, Mar­cano, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er added, “I think dur­ing the play­offs we utilised dif­fer­ent strate­gies to iden­ti­fy what we think will work best in this tour­na­ment against the op­po­nents.

Mar­cano was al­so ex­pect­ing a very tac­ti­cal ap­proach from his op­po­nents and not­ed that all the teams have seen each oth­er play and have at­tained video footage to as­sist in the strate­gies go­ing for­ward.”

Go­ing in­to the semi­fi­nal, the T&T coach hint­ed at one ma­jor area of con­cern for his team was their lack of con­ver­sion rate from penal­ty cor­ners op­por­tu­ni­ties

Hav­ing failed to score from any of their penal­ty-cor­ners in the tour­na­ment Mar­cano said, “I think our ra­tio of con­ver­sion is too low and has to be im­proved.”

In to­day’s first semi­fi­nal from noon, 37th ranked comes up against 35th rat­ed host Pe­ru with the win­ner ad­vanc­ing to Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal from 4 pm.

When both teams met in the round-robin stage, Pe­ru se­cured a nar­row 1-0 vic­to­ry and to­day, an­oth­er tight bat­tle is ex­pect­ed.

Next year’s Women's Pan Am Cup will take place from Jan­u­ary 20- 30.

Cur­rent stand­ings

Teams*P*W*D*L*F*A*Pts

1. Pe­ru*3*2*0*1*3*2*6

2. T&T*3*1*2*0*4*3*5

3. Paraguay*3*1*1*1*5*5*4

4. Brazil*3*0*1*2*2*4*1

To­day's Match­es

Semi­fi­nals

Pe­ru vs Brazil, 12 noon

Paraguay vs T&T, 2 pm

To­mor­row's Match­es

Third place: Semi­fi­nal Losers, 12 noon

Fi­nal: Semi­fi­nal win­ners, 4 pm.