T&T se­nior women’s hock­ey team coach An­tho­ny “Bumper” Mar­cano says he is very pleased with his team’s per­for­mance at the just con­clud­ed Pan Am Chal­lenge and is ex­pect­ing a tough bat­tle ahead at the Pan Amer­i­can Cup, next year.

The Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge end­ed at the Vil­la Maria del Tri­un­fo Pan Amer­i­can Com­plex, Li­ma on Sat­ur­day with the T&T women go­ing un­der to Pe­ru 2-0 in the four-team tour­na­ment fi­nal.

How­ev­er,  both teams had al­ready se­cured qual­i­fi­ca­tion to next Jan­u­ary 20 to 30 Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Chile fol­low­ing their semi­fi­nal wins on Fri­day.

Dur­ing the one-week tour­na­ment, T&T de­feat­ed Pe­ru 1-0 in their open­ing round-robin en­counter on Sep­tem­ber 26, fol­lowed by 2-2 draw with Paraguay on (Sep­tem­ber 28) and 1-1 draw with Brazil a day lat­er, to end in sec­ond spot at the end of group play with five points, one be­hind the Pe­ru­vians.

In the semi­fi­nal, T&T bat­tled past Paraguay 4-3 on sud­den-death penal­ty shoot-out af­ter a 1-1 draw in reg­u­la­tion-time while Pe­ru blanked Brazil 2-0, be­fore aveng­ing their round-robin loss to the "Ca­lyp­so Stick­women" for the gold medal.

Com­ment­ing on his team’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to next Jan­u­ary’s tour­na­ment, Mar­cano said he was very elat­ed with the per­for­mance of the group. He al­so heaped praise on the lead­er­ship of the team adding, “I think the team was led prop­er­ly by Amie Olton as cap­tain and Avion Ah­ston mak­ing her 50th ap­pear­ance al­so be­ing part of the cap­tain­cy group and Sa­van­nah De Fre­itas.

“I think work­ing along­side them and keep­ing the team to­geth­er on the out­side fo­cused on what we need­ed to do and achieve in this tour­na­ment for our pro­gram, they did tremen­dous work."

Mar­cano al­so praised the ef­forts of his en­tire tech­ni­cal team say­ing, “It wasn’t just about the coach­ing staff ei­ther as I think the med­ical staff was ex­cel­lent as they all worked tire­less­ly with my play­ers.

“Even when they were off the pitch they were work­ing with them to make sure they stayed healthy to come back on the pitch for us, and it was a pure team ef­fort and that was com­mend­able.”

Re­flect­ing on the team’s dif­fi­cult prepa­ra­tions in the lead up to the tour­na­ment dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and hav­ing lim­it­ed num­ber of play­ers at­tend­ing train­ing ses­sions based on the Min­istry of Health pro­to­cols Mar­cano said what the team has ac­com­plish is a big achieve­ment for the pro­gram to get back on the cir­cuit

“Yes we were miss­ing four play­ers from Long Is­land Uni­ver­si­ty (Saman­tha Olton, Saarah Olton, Fe­li­cia King, Kait­lyn Olton) that went with the ju­nior team and we al­so had Kim Young who was sup­posed to be com­ing from Aus­tralia and that would have been dif­fi­cult as they were in lock­down and couldn’t come out for it.

“But we felt that we had a good back­bone in be­ing able to par­tic­i­pate in this tour­na­ment with who we had.

“We had Avion Ash­ton com­ing back as well as Amie Olton, and  Bri­an­na Govia and they all had ex­pe­ri­ence be­hind them and we knew that would have helped us tremen­dous­ly go­ing in­to this tour­na­ment.

“Al­so be­ing able to in­clude some of our Un­der-21s that just con­clud­ed their own Ju­nior Pan Am and we had a few of them join­ing the group as well and get­ting the ex­po­sure and ex­pe­ri­ence at the high­er lev­el and ac­tu­al­ly com­ing out with a medal.

“This au­gurs well for the progamme and it al­so au­gurs well for their de­vel­op­ment go­ing for­ward and hope­ful­ly that will help the pro­gram build.

In ad­di­tion to Pe­ru and T&T, the eight-team Pan Amer­i­can Cup will fea­ture the six high­est-ranked teams from the pre­vi­ous Pan Am Cup (2017) and as the host coun­try, Chile had al­ready qual­i­fied.

They in­clude five-time Pan Amer­i­can Cup win­ners and the lone team to have ever won gold in the com­pe­ti­tion, Ar­genti­na, Chile, USA, Cana­da, Uruguay and Mex­i­co.

The T&T women who have ap­peared at the Pan Amer­i­can Cup three times pre­vi­ous­ly, in 2004 in Bar­ba­dos when they end­ed eight; 2009 when they placed fourth in Bermu­da; and four years lat­er when they end­ed sev­enth in Ar­genti­na.

T&T men, who have qual­i­fied four pre­vi­ous times (2004, 2009, 2013 and 2017), have al­so qual­i­fied for the 2022 edi­tion due to a fourth place fin­ish in Lan­cast­er, USA last time out, with their best show­ing, a bronze in 2013 in Cana­da.

The men join ti­tle-hold­ers and three-time win­ners Ar­genti­na, 2009 cham­pi­on Cana­da, USA, Brazil, Chile, Mex­i­co and Pe­ru in their tour­ney.

The 2022 Pan Amer­i­can Cup will serve as the re­gion­al qual­i­fi­er for the FIH World Cup.

With his fo­cus now on prepar­ing the team for the Pan Am Cup, Mar­cano said, “We now have three months to get ready and there is a lot of work to be done and it’s im­por­tant that we get that done.

A re­al­is­tic Mar­cano added, “That com­pe­ti­tion is go­ing to be to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent  as we are look­ing at the likes of Ar­genti­na, USA, Cana­da, and Chile and it's go­ing to be a tough group that we are go­ing to go in­to and in three months I am not sure if we are go­ing to be able to be in that top four.

“But I think qual­i­fy­ing in the ‘top six’ to be able to make the next Pan Am Cup is one of the goals that we are go­ing to look to achieve and that’s what we are go­ing to work to­wards."

The T&T coach was al­so of the be­lief that the en­tire coach­ing staff must be kept to­geth­er for the bet­ter­ment of the team.

He said, “I al­so be­lieve that in the short space of time it’s im­por­tant that we keep this staff to­geth­er.

“Every­thing has a cost to it, and every­body ob­vi­ous­ly have their lives to live but its im­por­tant that this staff stays to­geth­er to help de­vel­op the group as they know the group and un­der­stand the group and there­fore we need every­body on board to work to­wards these three months."