T&T had their tough­est test at the Amer­i­c­as Net­ball Men's Cham­pi­onships and came out on the los­ing end in St Kitts and Nevis on Tues­day night. The lo­cal men's team was de­feat­ed by Ja­maica, 62-49, at the Pam Tyson Net­ball Com­plex.

Goal-shoot­er Dex­troy Man­swell led T&T's shoot­ing with 36 goals from 37 at­tempts in a match which his team trailed at the end of each quar­ter.

Coach Pietra Gay stuck with her open­ing shoot­ing pair cap­tain Steve Mc­Sween, as the goal-shoot­er and goal-at­tack Keon Rus­sell. The T&T found it dif­fi­cult to feed its shoot­ers against a tough Ja­maican de­fence.

Mc­Sween scored five from six and Rus­sell four from five as T&T trailed by two (11-9) at the end of the first quar­ter. This prompt­ed coach Gay to make a change in the shoot­ing cir­cle and she ro­tat­ed in lead­ing shoot­er Dex­troy Man­swell as goal-shoot­er and Ker­ry McMil­lan as goal at­tack. T&T still strug­gled to make a come­back and held an 11-deficit (30-19) at the half.

On the re­sump­tion, T&T made a run be­hind the ef­fort of Man­swell and McMil­lan, outscor­ing the Ja­maicans 19-17 to trail by nine (47-38) but they ran out of steam in the fi­nal ses­sion. T&T was out­played 15-14 to set­tle for the 13-goal de­feat.

"Tonight's game was tough, and though we didn’t get the re­sult we want­ed in the cham­pi­onship, it’s all part of the jour­ney. We played against a high­ly com­pet­i­tive team and gave it every­thing we had," said coach Gay.

"As dis­ap­point­ed as we are, this is on­ly the be­gin­ning. I guar­an­tee we’ll come back stronger, more de­ter­mined, and ready to fight hard­er than ever. Watch out – we’re not done yet!"

T&T en­tered its penul­ti­mate match with wins against St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (54-37), USA (48-14), An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (87-16), St Kitts and Nevis (56-27) and Grena­da (47-25), re­spec­tive­ly. The lo­cal men were aim­ing to bounce back from their first loss in the eight-team tour­na­ment in their fi­nal match against Eng­land which was sched­uled for yes­ter­day.

Al­though dis­ap­point­ed by the loss, coach Gay and her team were look­ing to put the loss be­hind them and re­bound quick­ly.

"Tonight's loss to the Ja­maica men's net­ball team was a chal­leng­ing mo­ment for us, but we re­main stead­fast in our re­solve. As the say­ing goes, 'The race is not for the swift, but for those who en­dure to the end'.

"This is on­ly the be­gin­ning of our jour­ney—a small set­back in the grand scheme. We are ful­ly com­mit­ted to re­turn­ing stronger, learn­ing from this ex­pe­ri­ence, and dri­ving for­ward with even greater de­ter­mi­na­tion. The fight is far from over, and we are ready to rise."

Re­sults

T&T 49 (Keon Rus­sell 4/5, Steve Mc­Sween 5/6, Dex­troy Man­swell 36/37, Ker­ry McMil­lan 4/4) vs Ja­maica 62 (R Wal­lace 31/36, R Hen­dricks 12/19, K Dale 17/19, L Parkes 2/2). Quar­ter scores: 1st 11-9, 2nd 30-19, 3rd 47-38 (All in favour of Ja­maica).

St Kitts and Nevis 41 v USA 35

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da 24 vs Gren­da 50

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines 31 vs Eng­land 64