For­mer T&T se­nior women's hock­ey team coach An­tho­ny "Bumper" Mar­cano says the time was right for him to step down from his po­si­tion.

Last week­end, Mar­cano re­signed his po­si­tion of head coach of the team af­ter their sixth-placed fin­ish from sev­en teams at the just con­clud­ed Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Chile.

In Chile, the Avion Ash­ton-cap­tained "Ca­lyp­so Stick­women" women suf­fered heavy de­feats against the USA (16-0) and Cana­da (13-0) while blank­ing Pe­ru 2-0 in their round-robin group se­ries to qual­i­fy to the quar­ter­fi­nals as third-placed fin­ish­ers.

How­ev­er, in the last-eight clash with Chile, T&T were crushed 11-0 be­fore the Covid-19 virus hit the team camp, forc­ing T&T to de­fault their fifth-placed play­off with Uruguay.

The de­ci­sion by Mar­cano ends an al­most decade-long reign that was briefly in­ter­rupt­ed in 2013.

Mar­cano was first ap­point­ed to the se­nior women’s head coach­ing role back in 2010 for the Com­mon­wealth Games in Del­hi, In­dia where they were beat­en in all four match­es against In­dia (7-0), Scot­land (6-1), Aus­tralia (11-0) and South Africa (12-0).

He then led the women’s team to a sev­enth-place fin­ish at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Guadala­jara, Mex­i­co the fol­low­ing year but was then re­placed by Glen "Fi­do" Fran­cis for the 2013 Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Men­doza, Ar­genti­na where the “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women” again placed eighth.

A grad­u­ate of the In­ter­na­tion­al Coach­ing En­rich­ment Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gramme (ICECP), Mar­cano re­turned to the coach­ing role in 2018 and guid­ed the women to a third-place fin­ish at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in 2018 in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia, and al­so topped through the ear­ly staged of the FIH World League.

And last year, he led a youth­ful team to as sec­ond-placed in Pe­ru at the Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge which served as a qual­i­fi­er to last month’s FIH World Cup qual­i­fi­er, the Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Chile.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Sports on Tues­day about his de­ci­sion to step down from the coach­ing role, Mar­cano said his de­ci­sion was twofold.

He ex­plained, "The de­ci­sion to step down and al­low some­one else to share their ideas is im­por­tant and with me work­ing along­side the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee and build­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of coach­es where High Per­for­mance is a con­cern and even along­side the Min­istry of Sports with the Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Pro­grammes is go­ing to take some time.

“If we build the ca­pac­i­ty of the younger lev­el and we need to do that in­clu­sive of the coach­es.

“I think that putting my­self in a po­si­tion where I can as­sist in that man­ner is go­ing to take some time I wouldn’t be able to al­lot to both the hock­ey and that at the same time.

“Peo­ple don’t rec­og­nize the amount of work coach­es tend to go through prepar­ing teams or ath­letes and I just won’t be able to han­dle that work­load so I felt that we have coach­es with­in the hock­ey that can sub­sti­tute and build the ca­pac­i­ty of the ath­letes and they have gone to cours­es out­side, so now its time for them to give back like Dar­ren Cowie, Dwain Quan Chan and Pa­tri­cia Wright-Alex­is.”

With their top-six fin­ish in Chile ce­ment­ing an au­to­mat­ic Pan Amer­i­can Cup spot next time around, Mar­cano be­lieves he is leav­ing the pro­gram at a good time for new ideas to be im­ple­ment­ed to take them for­ward.

He said, "With me leav­ing the women’s pro­gram at this point puts them in a good spot to have new ideas from some­one new com­ing in and try­ing to see how they can maybe change the cul­ture of the pro­gramme and get some re­sults as well.

“I think the main thing for us as a tech­ni­cal staff go­ing out now is that we would have left them in a po­si­tion where they now have no qual­i­fiers to go to for the Pan Amer­i­can Cup as well as a bronze medal from the CAC Games to build on.”

Go­ing for­ward they will be at the CAC Games next year vy­ing for the top two po­si­tions to get in­to the Pan Am Games.

“We just have to find a way to get more in­ter­na­tion­al hock­ey on our cal­en­dar. I see we may miss out on the Com­mon­wealth Games this year but I think that over the pe­ri­od we should be in the mix for the next Com­mon­wealth Games.

“But that qual­i­fi­ca­tion comes down again to plan­ning, and play­ing at a high lev­el and chang­ing the cul­ture with our per­for­mances, so there are a lot of things that we have to put in place.

"So once that hap­pens that will be a great achieve­ment for the sport of hock­ey.

Mar­cano al­so sees it as be­ing very crit­i­cal that the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua which is be­ing used as a Step-Down fa­cil­i­ty by the Min­istry of Health in its fight against the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic be made avail­able if the play­ers and sport is to move for­ward.

He stat­ed, "We need the fa­cil­i­ty (Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre) and we need that wa­ter-based fa­cil­i­ty to be up and run­ning for these ath­letes to be able to per­form at their best and once that hap­pens we could in­vite peo­ple here to come and play.

"I tend to look way ahead and even if you look at 2028 Ve­gas for the Olympics you are look­ing at whether teams will be com­ing through here to play be­fore they head up to the USA and even our­selves qual­i­fy­ing be­cause we have to ask our­selves if that is a tar­get we should set, and if we can set that tar­get, then let us do so and plan to­wards it, and that again will fall on the shoul­ders of the new coach­es and how they plan with the T&THB,” end­ed Mar­cano.