T&T Un­der-16 net­ballers placed fourth at the Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Jean Pierre Youth Cham­pi­onships in Do­mini­ca af­ter their fi­nal match on Wednes­day evening.

The ju­nior “Ca­lyp­so Girls” fell to a 26-12 loss to even­tu­al cham­pi­on Bar­ba­dos, in the fi­nal match of a triple-head­er on day five, the fi­nal day of the tour­na­ment at the Wind­sor Park Sports Sta­di­um in Roseau.

T&T, coached by for­mer na­tion­al se­nior cap­tain Lystra Solomon-Sim­mons with Liselle John­son as her as­sis­tant coach, im­proved in every match since the start of the youth tour­na­ment on Sat­ur­day.

How­ev­er, they were not good enough to over­come the Bar­ba­di­ans, who played un­beat­en in the six-team youth cham­pi­onships, named af­ter late T&T star play­er Jean Pierre.

Lead­ing T&T’s shoot­ing once again was goal-at­tack (GA) Keiko Roy with eight gaols in 13 at­tempts as the ju­nior lo­cal team strug­gled from the first past trail­ing, 8-1 at the end of the first quar­ter. There was no ma­jor im­prove­ment in the sec­ond quar­ter as T&T fell fur­ther away hold­ing a 12-goal (16-4) deficit at the half.

To start the sec­ond half coach Solomon-Sim­mons in­tro­duced Ake­si Quashie (1/1) as the goal-shoot­er (GS), re­plac­ing open­er Adri­ana Moreno (3/6). T&T had its best shoot­ing and de­fen­sive quar­ter in the third pe­ri­od, net­ting five goals while hold­ing Bar­ba­dos to three but the team in red, white and black still trailed by dou­ble-fig­ures 10 (19-9) head­ing in­to the fourth quar­ter.

In the fi­nal pe­ri­od, coach Solomon-Sim­mons put Moreno back as goal-shoot­er but the Bar­ba­di­ans re­gained their com­po­sure and took the mo­men­tum back from T&T, led by lead­ing shoot­er of the tour­na­ment Ken­nia Black­man and goal-at­tack Ry­nia Ifill.

Black­man scored three in four in the quar­ter to fin­ish with 13 goals from 20 at­tempts, the same as Ifill but from 21 tries to help Bar­ba­dos fin­ish with 25 points from five wins.

T&T fin­ished with 16 points from three wins against Grena­da (16-11), St Lu­cia (22-8) and Cay­man Is­lands (24-12) and two loss­es to Do­mini­ca (18-15) and Bar­ba­dos (26-12). Over­all, T&T had a goal av­er­age of 1.19. The shoot­ers scored 89 goals from 75 against for a goal-dif­fer­ence of 14 and had 127 at­tempts for (AtF) and 125 at­tempts against (AtA) with an ac­cu­ra­cy (Acc) of 70.08 per cent.

Sec­ond-placed Grena­da (17) and third-placed Do­mini­ca (17) fin­ished with the same record, but the two coun­tries had re­spec­tive bet­ter goal av­er­age 1.51 and 1.36 and goal dif­fer­ence of 42 and 28.

De­spite T&T’s dis­ap­point­ing fourth-place fin­ish, the team had three ath­letes on the top play­ers’ list­ings. They were, not sur­pris­ing­ly, Roy (16) who apart from GA plays GS and wing at­tack (WA), and de­fend­ers Xhane Gray and Shi­an Lewis. Gray (16) and Lewis (14) play the goal-keep­er (GK), goal de­fence (GD) and wing-de­fence (WD) po­si­tions.

On Thurs­day morn­ing, Roy helped T&T top the team shoot­ing com­pe­ti­tion ahead of Bar­ba­dos and she placed sec­ond in the in­di­vid­ual shoot­ing com­pe­ti­tion be­hind Black­man. Roy al­so picked up the most ac­cu­rate ti­tle while Black­man placed first in most goals scored over­all.

The ju­nior “Ca­lyp­so Girls” were ex­pect­ed to re­turn home yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) af­ter­noon.

Wednes­day’s re­sults

Grena­da 34 (Keisia Math­urine 32/34, An­tho­nia George 1/5, De Jaune Bris­tol 1/3) vs St Lu­cia 14 (Kay­la Au­guste 4/9, Chimela Joseph 4/10, Vince­cia Ed­ward 6/8).

Cay­man Is­lands 10 (Zanaiyah Williams 5/9, Je­n­e­sis Mitchell 1/4, Jade Allen 4/10) vs Do­mini­ca 28 (Kenya John 18/22, Le-Myah Forde 10/16).

Bar­ba­dos 26 (Ken­nia Black­man 13/20, Ry­nia Ifill 13/21) vs T&T 12 (Adri­ana Moreno 3/6, Keiko Roy 8/13, Ake­si Quashie 1/1). Quar­ter scores: 1st 8-1, 2nd 16-4, 3rd 19-9 (All in favour of Bar­ba­dos)

Stand­ings

Pl*Team*W*L*D*GF*GA*AtF*AtA*GD*GAvg.*Acc*Pts

1*Bar­ba­dos*5*5*0*0*133*61*212*90*72*2.18*62.74%*25

2*Grena­da*5*3*2*0*124*82*160*149*42*1.51*77.50%*17

3*Do­mini­ca*5*3*2*0*106*78*163*129*28*1.36*65.03%*17

4*T&T*5*3*2*0*89*75*127*125*14*1.19*70.08%*16

5*St Lu­cia*5*1*4*0*54*115*102*172*-61*0.47*52.94%*5

6*Cay­mani isl*5*0*5*0*49*144*96*195*-95*0.34*51.04%*2

Top play­ers list

T&T: Xhane Gray (GK/GD/WD), Shi­an Lewis (GD/WD/GK), Keiko Roy (GA/GS/WA)

Bar­ba­dos: Azaria Al­leyne (GA/ GD), Ken­nia Black­man (GS/WA), Ry­nia Ifill (GS/GK), Maleah Mur­phy (C/GK), Siarah Small (GD/GK)

Cay­man Is­lands: Amoya Bur­ton (GD/GK)

Do­mini­ca: Le-Myah Forde, Kenya John, Ne­sha Remie

Grena­da: Robyn Adams (C/WA/GA), Keisia Math­urine (GS/GA/WA), Aniyah Red­head (GK/GD/GS)

St Lu­cia: Ke­ley Mon­louis (GS/GA)

Con­tin­gent

Play­ers: Shoot­ers - Danya May­ers, Adri­ana Moreno, Ake­si Quashie, Keiko Roy, Ja­da King; Cen­tre court - Pa­tryce Ash­by, Khali Stephen­son, Princess Tay­lor, Khe­myah An­der­son, Zaria Ar­mour; De­fend­ers - Xhané Gray, De­ne­sa Ha­gley, Shi­an Lewis, Aneisha Hyles, Ka­ri­na Alex­is

Tech­ni­cal staff: Lystra Solomon-Sim­mons (coach), Liselle John­son (as­sis­tant coach), Cather­ine John (man­ag­er), Abe­jah John­son (train­er), David R. Mack (phys­io­ther­a­pist)