T&T men and women Un­der-17 teams will both be in ac­tion when the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Youth Wa­ter Po­lo Cham­pi­onships splash­es off at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, in Bal­main, Cou­va, from on Fri­day, from 9 am.

The ten-day event is a Swim­ming Union of the Amer­i­cans (UA­NA) com­pe­ti­tion and serves as the qual­i­fi­er for the Amer­i­c­as re­gion to the FI­NA Worlds Youth Cham­pi­onships 2020.

The Amer­i­c­as re­gion is made up of four con­fer­ences be­ing USA, Cana­da, CON­SANAT (South Amer­i­ca), CC­CAN (Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Na­tions) and the coun­tries list­ed to com­pete in­clude USA, Cana­da, Brazil, Colom­bia, Ar­genti­na, Pe­ru, Ba­hamas, and host T&T in the 17 and Un­der Boys’ while USA, Cana­da, Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Pe­ru, and T&T will com­pete in the 17 and Un­der Girls’.

First, in ac­tion for T&T will be the girls' team against Brazil from 11.40 am while the boys' open their cam­paign in the first match of the evening ses­sion, against Cana­da from 2 pm.

The lo­cal girls will then face USA (Au­gust 17), Cana­da (Au­gust 18), Pe­ru (Au­gust 19), and Ar­genti­na (Au­gust 20) at the end of which the top two will qual­i­fy di­rect­ly to the semi­fi­nals on Au­gust 22 while the teams that fin­ish third to sixth will meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals to de­ter­mine the oth­er fi­nal-four qual­i­fiers.

In the boys' com­pe­ti­tion, T&t next faces Ar­genti­na (Au­gust 17), Pe­ru (Au­gust 18), Colom­bia (Au­gust 19), Brazil (Au­gust 20), USA (Au­gust 21) and Ba­hamas (Au­gust 22) at the end of which the top two teams will con­test the gold medal match, while the third and fourth-placed teams com­pete for bronze.

The fifth and sixth-placed teams will face off for fifth while sev­enth and eighth clash to avoid the cel­lar-spot.

Speak­ing on the eve of the tour­na­ment, T&T coach Jeff Pass­wa­ter, a St Louis, USA na­tive, and for­mer coach at Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pa­cif­ic, Mc Kendree Uni­ver­si­ty and an as­sis­tant coach at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty said the main aim of the lo­cal teams is to qual­i­fy for the Worlds.

"The boys need to win at least four match­es to have a chance to qual­i­fy­ing for the Worlds, while the girls will need to win no few­er than two match­es to have a chance.

With re­gards to his teams' tac­tics for the du­ra­tion of the cham­pi­onship, Pass­wa­ter was quick to point out that the strong points for the T&T teams are their de­fence, and once they can play strong de­fen­sive­ly it will trans­late in­to good of­fen­sive op­por­tu­ni­ties for us", said Pass­wa­ter who was YCF Wa­ter Po­lo Club in Or­lan­do, Fla., from 2012-2015 be­fore mov­ing on to be­come the vol­un­teer as­sis­tant coach at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty in 2016..

He added, "We will be play­ing again some very good teams, so we will al­so need to be very smart in how we con­trol the tem­po and du­ra­tion of our match­es".

Over­all, we are hop­ing to open up the sport lo­cal­ly to make sure that in the fu­ture we can have a wider tal­ent pool to choose from," added Pass­wa­ter.

The lo­cals teams have been in heavy train­ing since the ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of this year, in prepa­ra­tion ul­ti­mate­ly for this day and on the way they have done con­sid­er­ably well, with three gold medals and one sil­ver won at the Carif­ta Wa­ter Po­lo Cham­pi­onship, and one gold medal at the CC­CAN Cham­pi­onships, both held in Bar­ba­dos.

Over­all, the dou­ble-gen­der event will fea­ture 195 ath­letes, sev­en UA­NA tech­ni­cal wa­ter po­lo com­mit­tee mem­bers and 12 ref­er­ees.

The teams are ex­pect­ed to start ar­riv­ing on Au­gust 14 with the tech­ni­cal meet­ing set for a day lat­er fol­lowed by the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on the evening of Au­gust 16.

Match­es will be con­test­ed from Au­gust 16 to 23 with sev­en match­es be­ing con­test­ed dai­ly up un­til the fi­nal day which will fea­ture six match­es.

So far the T&T teams have en­joyed a very pos­i­tive 2019 with Carif­ta gold medals at the Carif­ta Games in the 14 and Un­der Co-ed, 19 and Un­der Girls’ and 19 and Un­der Boys, with a sil­ver in the 16 and Un­der Boys.

At the CC­CAN lev­el, T&T won gold in the 15 and Un­der Boys beat­ing ri­vals and neme­sis Puer­to Ri­co while in the past, T&T al­so qual­i­fied for World Youth Cham­pi­onship at Perth, in 2012 through its per­for­mance at Pan Amer­i­can Youths 2011.