Dar­ren Cowie, coach of the T&T’s men’s hock­ey5s team says the per­for­mances of the team that qual­i­fied for next Jan­u­ary’s FIH Hock­ey5s (five-a-side) Men’s World Cup in Mus­cat, Oman, must not go un­no­ticed.

He made the com­ment at the Diplo­mat­ic Lounge of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Mon­day night fol­low­ing the teams’ ar­rival from Ja­maica where T&T con­test­ed the Hock­ey5s Pan Amer­i­can Cups Tour­na­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona cam­pus Turf, Kingston.

T&T and the tour­na­ment win­ners, the USA, along with bronze medal win­ner Ja­maica qual­i­fied for the 16-team World Cup. The trio will be joined by Bel­gium, Hol­land, and Poland (Eu­rope), and Egypt, Kenya, and Nige­ria (Africa) along with host Oman as con­firmed teams, while Ocea­nia and Asia are yet to stage their qual­i­fiers from which three na­tions each will qual­i­fy.

In Sun­day’s fi­nal, T&T and USA played to a 2-2 draw at the end of the 20-minute reg­u­la­tion time. How­ev­er, the Amer­i­cans won 3-2 on sud­den-death penal­ty strokes.

Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Lounge, Pi­ar­co, Cowie thanked all the play­ers for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the tour­na­ment, along with the staff that ded­i­cat­ed their time vol­un­tar­i­ly.

He said: “Every­thing that we do we know its vol­un­tary as we don’t get paid for this but still do it with a high de­gree of pas­sion for the sport that we play and a high de­gree of pas­sion for each oth­er when we do step on the field of play for train­ing and com­pe­ti­tion.

“The ex­pe­ri­ence at the tour­na­ment was an amaz­ing one and the kind of ef­fort that the guys put out there to qual­i­fy for the World Cup was some­thing that should not go un­no­ticed based on the type of prepa­ra­tion that we do have.”

He added: “Of course, we al­ways ex­pect to do so much more for our play­ers to make sure that they are well tak­en care of on and off the field, but some­times we fall short, and some­times we do hit the mark, and at the end of the day, re­gard­less of the sit­u­a­tions and the cir­cum­stances the staff and the play­ers al­ways give their best foot for­ward when we come to these types of com­pe­ti­tions.

“Aside from that my­self and as­sis­tant coach Dwain Quan Chan, man­ag­er Kesh­en John­son, and the rest of the staff we are ex­treme­ly proud of the play­ers and the ma­tu­ri­ty that they showed out there dur­ing the tour­na­ment to end up win­ning the sil­ver medal.

“Be­cause it might feel like we lost the gold, but we al­so did win a sil­ver medal and qual­i­fied for the World Cup, and that’s still some­thing to be ex­treme­ly proud of so I want to thank the play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly for the ef­forts they put out there.”

The T&T women’s team just missed out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion for Oman af­ter a 2-0 loss to Paraguay in the bronze medal match, and al­though the women didn’t reach their ul­ti­mate goal of qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup, Cowie said, their ef­forts must be com­mend­ed as well.

He said: “I think they al­so did put their best foot for­ward and they gave a lot of ef­fort on and off the field, and it’s some­thing that again goes un­no­ticed be­cause be­hind closed doors no­body knows what’s re­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the whole prepa­ra­tion phase where there is a whole lot of ups and downs and tri­als and tribu­la­tions that we as sports­men and sports­women go through dai­ly hav­ing to have our own jobs, and our own dai­ly lives while try­ing to bal­ance that of be­ing a na­tion­al ath­lete, it’s not easy. He added: “I think de­spite the women not reach­ing their goal, the per­for­mance that they put out is still some­thing to be very ad­mirable about.”

T&T Hock­ey Board (TTHB) pres­i­dent, Roger St Rose, thanked the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) for their con­tin­ued sup­port as well as the Sports and Cul­tur­al Fund and the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC). Fo­cus­ing on the women’s team he said de­spite the fourth-placed fin­ish and miss­ing out on the World Cup they can’t be dis­ap­point­ed be­cause they have come a long way.

He added: “The guys had a num­ber of ob­jec­tives to do and achieved 95 per cent of them. The first ma­jor ob­jec­tive was to qual­i­fy from this tour­na­ment to the World Cup, and al­though we didn’t meet the sec­ond ob­jec­tive to win the gold, some­times you can’t al­ways get 100 per cent.”

Mean­while, Patrice Charles, Deputy Di­rec­tor of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport in the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, speak­ing on be­half of Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe and act­ing Min­is­ter of Sport Ran­dall Mitchell, not­ed: “The Min­istry has ob­served the ef­forts of the T&THB in re­build­ing and re­vi­tal­is­ing the sport of hock­ey to what it used to be.”

Charles added, that with the CAC Games com­ing, he knows both teams have goals and ob­jec­tive and the gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the SporTT stand con­tin­u­ous­ly ready to as­sist and to help pro­pel the teams to the heights that they per­ceive and can’t yet per­ceive.

The wel­com­ing event was host­ed by the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T.