GROS ISLET – Saint Lucia’s national netball team has withdrawn from next month’s Netball World Cup Sydney 2027 Qualifier Americas in Barbados due to financial reasons.
The "Piton Sparks" was expected to be among seven countries taking part in the Qualifiers at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex from October 19-26.
However, in an interview with the St Lucia Times, president of the Saint Lucia Netball Association, Sanya Antoine, revealed the team would not be making the trip because of financial constraints.
“We’ve been going out a lot to corporate Saint Lucia, [but] we’ve not been getting the responses that we were expecting, especially after the CAC (Central American and Caribbean) Games. We have a lot of these persons coming out of poor family backgrounds, so it is important that we support them; we are there to support them, whatever they need, their schooling.
“We got promises we thought would have been fulfilled, and they weren’t, and that’s very disappointing, heartbreaking, actually, for when we had to have the meeting with the team and let them know, because they have been at training,” Antoine said.
She contended that the association needed to get its financial affairs in order.
“(For) too long it has been the executive funding the association… Up to now, we still have monies we owe past presidents because they’ve been taking money from their own pockets to fund stuff.
“We need to get our financing in order. We don’t want to be living hand to mouth. When a tournament comes up, we have to be going there. We want to be sustainable,” Antoine pointed out.
The shocking development comes following the team’s historic performance at the 2026 CAC Games, where they won the country’s first-ever team sport medal by earning bronze in Santo Domingo.
Saint Lucia also won the netball tournament at the Windward Islands School Games for the first time since 2019 and narrowly missed third place at the Jean Pierre Caribbean Youth Tournament.
CMC
