New head coach of T&T’s se­nior women’s net­ball team, Liselle John­son, is ea­ger to open doors and op­por­tu­ni­ties for young women and girls as­pir­ing to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the high­est lev­el.

John­son, who was of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed last month af­ter com­ing through the short­list­ing and in­ter­view process with Net­ball T&T (NTT), con­duct­ed her third of four ini­tial na­tion­al screen­ing ses­sions yes­ter­day. Fol­low­ing ses­sions at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na on Fri­day and the South­ern Re­gion­al Sports Are­na in Pleas­antville on Sat­ur­day, John­son and her tech­ni­cal staff in­vit­ed women and girls from Trinidad’s South­east to the Ma­yaro In­door Fa­cil­i­ty Mon­day.

One ses­sion card­ed for the Mont­gomery Hard Court in To­ba­go on Sun­day had to be post­poned due to per­sist­ing is­sues on air and seabridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. John­son said a ten­ta­tive date will be set, de­pen­dent on be­ing able to book in­ter-is­land trans­port.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sport in Ma­yaro Mon­day, John­son said, “The at­ten­dance in the North was much bet­ter. As we know, net­ball is pre­dom­i­nant­ly played with­in the East-West Cor­ri­dor. We had very high at­ten­dance at the Mal­oney Fa­cil­i­ty. At the South­ern In­door Fa­cil­i­ty and here, the turnout was not low, but it was bet­ter than ex­pect­ed. To­day, we ac­tu­al­ly had ten par­tic­i­pants, which is very good, and at South­ern In­door, we had nine par­tic­i­pants.”

De­spite the mod­er­ate num­bers, John­son says it is es­sen­tial to give the largest num­ber of women and girls the best chance to be seen.

“I be­lieve it’s very im­por­tant be­cause we have to have some sort of pro­gres­sion in place and suc­ces­sion plan­ning. We have to open the doors, which is the rea­son for hav­ing this screen­ing. They will be able to get ex­po­sure to the sport and see what is in­volved at a high lev­el, and even if they don’t meet the re­quire­ments right now, fu­tur­is­ti­cal­ly, they will still get the ben­e­fits.”

John­son, 45, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an as­sis­tant coach with T&T’s Un­der-16 team in 2023, is now in her first se­nior coach­ing role. She out­lined that, hav­ing con­duct­ed the screen­ing ses­sions, the next step would be to nar­row her pool as T&T pre­pares for three ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions this year.

She said, “The next step af­ter this is se­lec­tion. The as­sis­tant coach and I are go­ing to sit down to­geth­er and group the play­ers ac­cord­ing to dif­fer­ent po­si­tions, and then we will pick our team. We have not de­cid­ed on the num­bers be­cause, as you know, there are three ma­jor tour­na­ments in­volved. Two of them clash back-to-back.”

The Ca­lyp­so Girls will first at­tend the XXI­II Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, Scot­land, from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 2, which over­laps with the 25th Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games (CAC) from Ju­ly 24 to Au­gust 8. T&T is al­so ex­pect­ed at the Net­ball World Cup Syd­ney 2027 qual­i­fiers for teams from the Amer­i­c­as Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines in Oc­to­ber 2026.

John­son ex­pressed her de­sire to see the play­ers in game sit­u­a­tions and an­tic­i­pates be­ing able to play some in­ter­na­tion­al warm-up match­es in the lead-up to her first com­pet­i­tive as­sign­ment in Ju­ly.

“I have a few teams in mind. I have to speak with NTT in or­der to arrange that. So, as soon as that is done, you all will know. I’m just look­ing for­ward to hav­ing the sup­port of T&T.”

Cor­rec­tion

Guardian’s ar­ti­cle on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 4 “John­son takes over Ca­lyp­so Girls team as head coach” stat­ed that John­son holds a Lev­el 1 and Lev­el 3 coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from Net­ball Aus­tralia, as well as a Lev­el 2 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the then T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) how­ev­er she clar­i­fied that she holds cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in foun­da­tion coach­ing from Aus­tralia, Lev­el 1 and Lev­el 3 from Amer­i­c­as Net­ball and Lev­el 2 from the TTNA. John­son has al­so com­plet­ed a FI­FA/CIES UWI Diplo­ma in Sports Man­age­ment and a diplo­ma in emer­gency man­age­ment and phys­i­cal train­ing in­struc­tion, among oth­er sports and aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.