T&T Un­der-16 net­ballers se­cured the Jean Pierre Caribbean Youth Net­ball ti­tle af­ter de­feat­ing St Lu­cia 34-20 at the Wildey Gym­na­si­um, Bridgetown, St Michaels, Bar­ba­dos on Sat­ur­day.

The play­ers, dressed in red, white and black, were the first to score and raced to a 3-0 lead. Goal-shoot­er Teni­cia Goodridge opened the scor­ing for T&T less than ten sec­onds in­to the en­counter. The St Lu­cians had their chance to con­vert but gave up pos­ses­sion.

Lo­cal goal-at­tack Shi­an Lewis took the score to 2-0 one minute and 40 sec­onds lat­er. Goodridge ex­tend­ed the lead to 3-0 some 13 sec­onds lat­er. Their op­po­nents even­tu­al­ly got on the score­card 2.20 in­to the match.

Goodridge and Lewis com­bined to ex­tend the ad­van­tage. How­ev­er, the St Lu­cian de­fend­ers fought back with blocks and caused turnovers to keep the score­line at 8-6 at the end of the first quar­ter.

The So­journ­er "Suzie" Hyles-Lewis-coach team re­mained ahead at the half time (18-13) and com­plet­ed the third quar­ter (28-14) be­fore pulling away to take the match by 14 goals (34-20).

With the vic­to­ry, the Makay­la Grant-cap­tained squad played un­beat­en in the week-long re­gion­al tour­na­ment.

T&T de­feat­ed hosts and de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Bar­ba­dos (38-22) on Fri­day. The win­ners opened their cam­paign with a 30-19 tri­umph over Grena­da on Mon­day be­fore get­ting past An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (24-6), a day lat­er. The un­beat­en run con­tin­ued with a 44-13 win over Do­mini­ca.

Goodridge and Lewis al­so led the lo­cal squad to the team shoot­ing ti­tle on Fri­day with 128 goals ahead of Bar­ba­dos (120), St Lu­cia (119), Do­mini­ca/Grena­da (114) and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (93).

T&T de­fend­er Aneisha Hyles said her team­mates achieved their goal of play­ing un­de­feat­ed.

"That was the plan. We went out there and ex­e­cut­ed that plan. The team was ner­vous at the be­gin­ning but we came to­geth­er and re­fo­cussed," said Hyles, adding that her col­leagues were able to with­stand the pres­sure by St Lu­cia. "Our coach­es re­laxed us and told us not to wor­ry. They mo­ti­vat­ed from the bench and al­so our sup­port­ers. We have no words right now."

T&T cap­tured the over­all tro­phy af­ter miss­ing out on last year's edi­tion in St Lu­cia. T&T fin­ished fourth in the 2023 in Do­mini­ca.

The Cham­pi­onship is named in ho­n­our of for­mer T&T net­ball great Jean Pierre who cap­tained the lo­cal team to the 1979 World se­nior net­ball tro­phy along with Aus­tralia and New Zealand in front of home fans in Port-of-Spain.

Bar­ba­dos played Grena­da in the fi­nal match of the tour­na­ment on Sat­ur­day evening and emerged with a 30-26 vic­to­ry to place sec­ond. The lo­cal con­tin­gent is sched­uled to re­turn home at 1 pm, to­day.

Re­sults

Day One

Bar­ba­dos 46 vs An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 7

Grena­da 34 vs Do­mini­ca 19

Day Two

T&T 30 vs Grena­da 19

St Lu­cia 30 vs An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 7

Bar­ba­dos 47 vs Do­mini­ca 16

Day Three

St Lu­cia 35 vs Do­mini­ca 19

T&T 34 vs An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 6

Day Four

Grena­da 31 vs An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 14

Bar­ba­dos 33 vs St Lu­cia 21

T&T 44 vs Do­mini­ca 13

Day Five

Do­mini­ca 22 vs An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 17

St. Lu­cia 32 vs Grena­da 22

T&T 38 vs Bar­ba­dos 22

Day Six

T&T 34 vs St Lu­cia 20

Grena­da 24 vs Bar­ba­dos 30