Ja­son Hack­ett scored four goals as the T&T men's wa­ter po­lo team de­feat­ed Ba­hamas 18-12 to se­cure their first win at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Am­a­teur Swim­ming Con­fed­er­a­tion (CC­CAN) Cham­pi­onship at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Wildey, Christ Church, Bar­ba­dos on Fri­day.

Both, T&T and Ba­hamas went in­to their match with 0-2 win-loss records af­ter the first two days of com­pe­ti­tion in Pool B with T&T go­ing un­der to Puer­to Ri­co 6-23 and Mex­i­co, 5-22.

How­ev­er, at the end of the first eight-minute quar­ter, T&T held a nar­row 4-3 lead which they car­ried to the half-time in­ter­val at 7-6.

In the third pe­ri­od, T&T blew the match open by outscor­ing Ba­hamas 6-3 to push their 13-9 be­fore com­plet­ing a 5-3 fourth-quar­ter ad­van­tage to seal the 18-12 tri­umph.

Leon Daniel added three goals for T&T while Kelvin Cae­sar, Jean-Luc Hinds and Yan­nick Rober­ston net­ted two each while the quin­tet of Ah­keem Valen­tine, Christo­pher El­liot, Ethan El­liot, Dante Drakes-Mck­ell and Tyrece Joseph.

For the Ba­hamas, Joshua Gib­son, Gabriel Sas­tre and Se­quan Miller each scored three goals.

With the win, T&T end­ed with a 1-2 record and third spot and will face Pool A run­ner-up Venezuela in the quar­ter­fi­nal rounds on Sun­day.

The quar­tet of Cu­ba, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Bar­ba­dos com­prised Pool A, and at the end of the round-robin pool phase, the teams will play cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals with the win­ner of Pool A fac­ing the fourth place team in Pool B. At the end of the tour­na­ment, the top sev­en fin­ish­ers will qual­i­fy for the CAC Games.

In the women's com­pe­ti­tion, T&T was hand­ed a third straight loss, 6-31 to Mex­i­co with Bre­an Jor­dan and Olivia Neck­les lead­ing the way with two goals each for the losers while Aaliyah Aching, and cap­tain Shemiyah Ross got one each.

The Mex­i­cans held 9-0, 15-1 and 5-23 at the end of the first three eight-minute quar­ters.

The de­feat added to pre­vi­ous loss­es to Puer­to Ri­co (10-20), and Cu­ba (2-35) as T&t end­ed round one of the two rounds of round-robin match­es with­out a win.

To­day (Sat­ur­day) is a rest day with match­es set to re­sume on Sun­day, how­ev­er, with on­ly four teams reg­is­tered, T&T women are al­ready as­sured of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to next year’s 24th edi­tion of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Games in San Sal­vador, El Sal­vador as the top five teams will qual­i­fy from CC­CAN.

It will be the third time San Sal­vador has held the CAC Games, fol­low­ing its host­ing of the in­au­gur­al edi­tion in 1935 and the 2002 event.

The Games had been due to take place in Pana­ma be­fore the coun­try pulled out of the host­ing rights in Ju­ly of last year.