RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael-king@guardian.co.tt

T&T net­ballers were made to work for their third win at the Net­ball World Cup (NWC) 2023 Amer­i­c­as qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment in Ja­maica but they pulled off a nar­row 49-42 win over St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG) on Mon­day night, to re­main un­beat­en in the nine-team com­pe­ti­tion.

The na­tion­al team, led by cap­tain de­fend­er Shaquan­da Greene-Noel, en­tered the close matchup with wins against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (55-24) and St Lu­cia (63-25), re­spec­tive­ly, in back-to-back match­es on Sun­day.

Play­ing on court two at the Na­tion­al In­door Sports Cen­tre in Kingston, head coach Kem­ba Dun­can stuck with her ex­pe­ri­enced shoot­ers in Afeisha Noel and goal-at­tack Joelisa Coop­er to ral­ly T&T as the hunt con­tin­ues for one of two spots up for grabs at the Qual­i­fiers for next year’s NWC in Cape Town, South Africa.

Both shot well with Noel, the goal-shoot­er, lead­ing the way with 32 goals from 37 at­tempts while Coop­er shot with 90 per­cent ac­cu­ra­cy, con­nect­ing 19 from 21 in a match, which was ba­si­cal­ly de­cid­ed in the first half.

The “Ca­lyp­so Girls” led 27-20 at half­time but were matched goal-for-goal in the third quar­ter, to re­main ahead by sev­en goals (37-30) head­ing in­to the fourth pe­ri­od.

On the re­sump­tion though, it was SVG tak­ing ini­tia­tive in the open­ing min­utes of the fi­nal quar­ter outscor­ing T&T 8-5 to re­duce their deficit to four (42-38) with six min­utes to go. How­ev­er, T&T man­aged to main­tain that four-goal ad­van­tage (44-40) with four min­utes re­main­ing on the clock then 46-42 with two min­utes.

The “Ca­lyp­so Girls” added three more goals which the Vin­cen­tians had no an­swer to de­spite again match­ing T&T goal-for-goal as both team scored 12 goals in the fourth quar­ter but it was the un­beat­en T&T com­ing away with the three-goal vic­to­ry.

In oth­er match­es, Ja­maica crushed the Unit­ed States, 70-16, Grena­da de­feat­ed An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, 62-29 and Bar­ba­dos beat St Lu­cia, 58-26.

Ac­tion on day three last night with the “Ca­lyp­so Girls” tak­ing on un­beat­en Grena­da, which is coached by T&T’s Althea Mc­Collin with her daugh­ter, T&T in­ter­na­tion­al and for­mer se­nior net­ball team cap­tain Kali­fa Mc­Collin, serv­ing as her as­sis­tant coach.

T&T sits on top of the nine-team ta­ble with six points, the same as the Grena­di­ans but holds a bet­ter goal dif­fer­ence, 77 com­pared to Grena­da’s 51.

In day four ac­tion to­day, T&T will again play back-to-back match­es, first fac­ing the Cay­man Is­lands in the morn­ing ses­sion at 12.25 pm (T&T time) and lat­er against USA at 9.15 pm.

Nine teams are tak­ing part in the round-robin qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment, two of which will qual­i­fy for the World Cup al­though one par­tic­i­pat­ing team, Ja­maica, has al­ready qual­i­fied based on World Net­ball Rank­ings.