Net­ball Trinidad and To­ba­go (NTT) has ap­point­ed for­mer T&T Un­der-16 as­sis­tant coach Liselle John­son as head coach of the coun­try’s se­nior women’s net­ball team. NTT Pres­i­dent Deb­bie-Ann Fran­cois con­firmed the se­lec­tion to Guardian Me­dia Sports via a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day.

Fran­cois added, “NTT would have gone through the process of in­ter­views, and a new­ly in­stalled coach in the name of Ms Liselle John­son has been nom­i­nat­ed, and she would have ac­cept­ed the po­si­tion to coach our se­nior ladies for this team.”

John­son, 45, holds cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in foun­da­tion coach­ing from Aus­tralia, Lev­el 1 and Lev­el 3 from Amer­i­c­as Net­ball and Lev­el 2 from NTT.

The T&T Fire Ser­vice sub-of­fi­cer al­so claimed to have worked with Net­ball Amer­i­ca in prepar­ing a team to con­test last year’s in­au­gur­al UAE Net­ball Cup in Dubai. How­ev­er, ad­mit­ted­ly, she has nev­er held a se­nior head coach job at club or in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

While not­ing John­son’s in­ex­pe­ri­ence, Fran­cois ex­pressed con­fi­dence in NTT’s choice.

“We have a young coach, and we are look­ing for­ward to great things. She would have re­ceived a good re­cep­tion with her tech­ni­cal staff. She is fair­ly new to per­sons, but she has some ex­pe­ri­ence be­hind her name in terms of what she is ca­pa­ble of and able to do.”

Ac­cord­ing to the NTT head, the sport’s gov­ern­ing body lo­cal­ly re­ceived ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est from six per­sons for the po­si­tion. Af­ter a de­tailed screen­ing process, three names were short­list­ed.

“The short­list would have been her­self (John­son), Dal­ton Hind, and Les­ley-Ann Bac­quain. The per­sons that were put for­ward were the ones that we would have screened, and who­ev­er would have come out on top is who we would have nom­i­nat­ed. We would have done a fair process in terms of in­ter­view­ing, had a pan­el go through all the rigours that are re­quired, and that per­son would have come out on top.”

Hind is a Ja­maican in­ter­na­tion­al net­ball coach, um­pire, and ad­min­is­tra­tor who has coached at club, high school, and na­tion­al lev­els in Ja­maica, in­clud­ing the men’s se­nior team and var­i­ous women’s youth teams.

Bac­quain had been head coach of the Un­der-16 team in 2024 be­fore she was switched to lead an­oth­er youth team to the Is­land Vibes Net­ball Tour­na­ment, which took place in Ja­maica.

T&T’s se­nior net­ball team has been in­ac­tive since the 2023 Net­ball World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa, un­der the stew­ard­ship of for­mer coach Joel Young-Strong. There, the Ca­lyp­so Girls placed 12th over­all out of 16 na­tions with a 1-6 win-loss record.

How­ev­er, 2026 presents John­son with three in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions in her first head coach role. 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 to par­tic­i­pate in 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, 45, of­fi­cial­ly as­sumed du­ties for these as­sign­ments on Fri­day at the Mal­oney In­door Sport Are­na, Mal­oney, for the first of four ini­tial­ly planned open screen­ing ses­sions for in­ter­est­ed play­ers.

De­spite her lack of in­ter­na­tion­al coach­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, John­son be­lieves that pre­vi­ous work with USA Net­ball, along with her ex­pe­ri­ence as as­sis­tant coach with the T&T Un­der-16 team, will serve her well.

When con­tact­ed on Fri­day, she told Guardian Me­dia Sport that she was look­ing for­ward to the chal­lenge of coach­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I haven’t been test­ed at the se­nior lev­el. But the op­por­tu­ni­ty ex­ists that I can be an anom­aly. I think I can bring some­thing new be­cause no­body re­al­ly knows my coach­ing style, and no­body un­der­stands how I think or how I in­ter­pret the game. So this is my op­por­tu­ni­ty now to put for­ward the knowl­edge that I have gained and ap­ply it as best as I can to the ath­letes to be able to get the best out of them and for them to be able to pro­duce.”

She ex­plained that her role with Net­ball Amer­i­ca was in an ad­vanced stage be­fore the op­por­tu­ni­ty to coach T&T arose.

“Ini­tial­ly, when I joined them, they were prepar­ing to go to Dubai. I did prepa­ra­tions with them for that tour­na­ment. They were sup­posed to be prepar­ing for an­oth­er tour­na­ment, which would have been World Cup qual­i­fiers. But I end­ed up tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to join Trinidad and To­ba­go’s team to as­sist my coun­try. To ex­pe­ri­ence coach­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

Com­ment­ing on her first open screen­ing ses­sion on Fri­day, John­son ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion at the num­ber of youth play­ers who showed in­ter­est by at­tend­ing.

“We had a lot of ju­nior ath­letes com­ing from the un­der-21 or un­der-16 team. Some of the ath­letes were re­al­ly young. I’m very proud that they came out.”

When asked about how she would like her fi­nal team to play, John­son said, “From watch­ing in­ter­na­tion­al games and see­ing how they play, our de­fen­sive play­ers need to be re­al­ly sure. We have not been play­ing for a while at the lev­el we should be at, so be­sides my­self, the train­ers have a lot of work to put in to get them fit and to get them to move.”

An­oth­er open screen­ing ses­sion was sched­uled for yes­ter­day at the South­ern Re­gion­al Sport­ing Are­na, Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do, from 8 am to 12 pm, and at the Ma­yaro In­door Fa­cil­i­ty, Ma­yaro, from 8 am to 12 pm on Mon­day. To­day’s planned ses­sion at Mont­gomery Hard Court, To­ba­go, had to be post­poned.