Dy­nam­ic de­fen­sive duo Lil­i­ah Matthews and Chanteal Per­ry-Mc Ewen were al­most im­pen­e­tra­ble in lead­ing Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) to vic­to­ry in its open­ing match of the Jean Pierre Chal­lenge in the Courts All Sec­tors Net­ball League at the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Tacarigua on Mon­day night.

TSTT de­feat­ed Mis­cel­la­neous 26-13 in a fast-paced match to elim­i­nate the new­com­er from the knock­out com­pe­ti­tion for teams in the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion.

The match opened with a num­ber of missed at­tempts from both ends of the court un­til TSTT's shoot­ing com­bi­na­tion of goal-shoot­er Kami­la Sobers and goal-at­tack Kani­ka Paul Payne set­tled down and earned their team a 7-0 lead halfway through the first half.

Mis­cel­la­neous man­aged to pull one back thanks to Ree­ka Seer­at­tan, who was the lone shoot­er on tar­get as her goal-shoot­er Ger­maine Charles could not con­nect un­der the in­tense pres­sure of Matthews and Per­ry-Mc Ewen.

By the end of the first 20-minute half, TSTT had dou­bled its score while Seer­at­tan closed on five goals from 11 tries, all she would pro­duce in the match-up.

In the sec­ond half, Mis­cel­la­neous made a change in its shoot­ing line-up, re­plac­ing Charles with Ny­ota Salden­ha. The new goal-shoot­er did well enough to add eight to her team's score­line but TSTT's shoot­ing pair con­tin­ued to work on the op­pos­ing end.

"One of the fo­cus of the game was dis­ci­pline," said coach Grace Parkin­son-Grif­fith. "For the du­ra­tion of the game, they were to fo­cus on ad­vanc­ing to the ball and keep­ing the play open and wide mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for the op­po­nents. This while main­tain­ing pos­ses­sion to pen­e­trate the shoot­ing cir­cle. The shoot­ers held their own to give us the score­line that was achieved."

Paul-Payne was the more ac­cu­rate of the two in the cir­cle with 17 off 23 while Sobers end­ed with nine from 23.

TSTT moves on to meet Jabloteh in the semi­fi­nal round on Jan­u­ary 28 at 7.15 pm. On Mon­day, De­fence Force will play Bermudez in the oth­er semi­fi­nal match. Teams are bat­tling to get in­to the fi­nal set for Feb­ru­ary 3.

The TSTT club al­so had suc­cess in the Retro Di­vi­sion, beat­ing Les En­fants 28-21. Denise Rose, new to the TSTT ros­ter, com­bined well with De­bra Alie with each net­ting 14 from 20 and 24 at­tempts, re­spec­tive­ly. It was TSTT first win af­ter los­ing to Po­lice (19-15) in its open­ing match last week.

In the oth­er match, Po­lice earned its sec­ond win of the sea­son, beat­ing Jabloteh, 35-23.

Re­sults

Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion

Mis­cel­la­neous 13 (Ger­maine Charles 0/2, Ree­ka Seer­at­tan 5/11, Ny­ota Salden­ha 8/14, Jo­ce­lyn Mar­celle 0/1) vs TSTT 26 (Kami­la Sobers 9/23, Kani­ka Paul Payne 17/23). Half time 14-5 (TSTT).

Retro Di­vi­sion

TSTT 28 (Denise Rose 14/20, De­bra Alie 14/24) vs Les En­fants 21 (Michelle Hutchins 12/17, Bar­bara Brit­to 4/7, Joanne Payne 5/13). Quar­ter scores: 8-4 (TSTT), 2nd 16-11  (TSTT), 3rd 22-16 (TSTT).

Jabloteh 23 (Ju­lia Brit­to 19/33, Lil­ia Cameron 3/5 Sher­ry Thomas 1/4) vs Po­lice 35 (Bev­er­ly Her­nan­dez 17/25, Peg­gy-Ann Brown 1/1, Don­na Charles 17/27). Quar­ter scores: 1st 10-6 (Po­lice), 2nd 17-14 (Po­lice), 3rd 25-22 (Po­lice)

To­mor­row's match­es

Las Lo­mas vs Bermudez, 5.30 pm

TT Post vs USC, 6.20 pm

MIC vs Jabloteh, 7.10 pm