RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

Fire Ser­vice were lit­er­al­ly on fire all sea­son, to close the Courts All Sec­tors Net­ball League as the most suc­ces­ful team, sweep­ing all ti­tles that were up for grabs in the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion.

On Mon­day night, led by goal-shoot­er Jameela Mc­Carthy, Fire grabbed the Steve Sargeant Chal­lenge (SSC) tro­phy at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, to add to its Pre­mier­ship league ti­tle sealed on Sat­ur­day at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na and the Di­vi­sion­al Knock­out crown, won last week.

"We want­ed to win every­thing," said goal-at­tack Si­mone Mor­gan, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er. "We ex­ceed­ed all ex­pec­ta­tions thanks to the ladies, who left it all on the court and came out with all the ti­tles."

Mor­gan gave great sup­port to Mc­Carthy, the goal-shoot­er, who net­ted 24 goals from 36 tries to lead Fire past the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), 29-20 in the SSC fi­nal af­ter re­turn­ing scores of 54 goals from 70 at­tempts to see Fire to a huge 67-14 win over the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in their fi­nal league match, two days ear­li­er.

Mor­gan was vi­tal in both wins, feed­ing her shoot­er the ball while con­nect­ing five off six in the 20-minute a half com­pe­ti­tion ver­sus UTT and against UWI, con­nect­ing 13 in 24 in the lop­sided vic­to­ry.

"It was a re­lief be­cause we worked so hard for the win," said Mor­gan af­ter Mon­day's tri­umph.

In the SSC fi­nale, UTT coached by for­mer na­tion­al coach and play­er Brid­get Adams jumped to an ear­ly lead 5-2 lead thanks to the shoot­ing com­bi­na­tion of Anas­tas­cia Wil­son (11/16)and Aquila Blugh. How­ev­er, Fire, which was with­out a coach on the bench, fought back and lev­elled the scores at six.

Again UTT went on a run and got its biggest lead in the match, 12-7 with 5.05 to go in the half. Fire though man­aged to chip away at that lead and trailed on­ly by two (14-12) at half-time.

Sec­ond-half was a whole new ball game as the Fire unit did away its deficit to tie the scores again at 14. The ex­change of goals con­tin­ued for the next five min­utes un­til Fire went up by two (18-16) with 13.55 re­main­ing on the clock.

For­ti­fied by a de­fen­sive squad that in­clud­ed goal-keep­er Gar­brel Sel­man, goal-de­fence Afeisha Noel, who is usu­al­ly used on the shoot­ing end, and wing-de­fence Fiona Hold­er, Fire was able to hold UTT to 16 goals for four min­utes while the cen­tre-court of Can­dice Guerero (cen­tre) and wing-at­tack Onel­la Jack, nor­mal­ly in a de­fen­sive bib, were use­ful in get­ting the ball down to the of­fen­sive end.

"We need­ed a stronger front court be­cause most of our at­tack­ers had in­juries, " said Mor­gan. "So we moved Onel­la up to help bring the ball and we need­ed Afeisha's long arms and safe hands to get re­bounds. Both did an out­stand­ing job."

With four min­utes left in the half, UTT again tried to make a run and came with­in five goals (25-20) but Fire pulled away again to claim the sev­en-goal vic­to­ry.

"We were play­ing their game in the first half and strug­gled," said Mor­gan. "We played our game in the sec half and got the win."

Dou­ble Elim­i­na­tion Knock­out com­pe­ti­tions

Ear­li­er, the Dou­ble Elim­i­na­tion knock­out win­ners in both the Cham­pi­onship and Al­ter­na­tive di­vi­sions were de­cid­ed.

The Cham­pi­onship cat­e­go­ry was com­pet­i­tive as ex­pect­ed but it was Bermudez be­ing crowned the cham­pi­on. In the fi­nal, the Bermudez team topped Po­lice, 22-14, thanks to Make­da De Fre­itas (13/19) and In­dra An­der­son (9/13).

In the Al­ter­na­tive fi­nal, Fire with shoot­ing from Chelsea Dele­cia (5/12) and Sha­nia Williams (9/12) eased past UWI, 14-6 in the ti­tle match.