T&T's se­nior women's hock­ey5 team went down 2-1 to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (USA) on Thurs­day evening in their at­tempt to earn an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot for the Hock­ey World Cup in Mus­cat, Oman next Jan­u­ary 2024.

How­ev­er, the team still has an­oth­er chance at qual­i­fy­ing from a third-place play-off against the los­er of the oth­er se­mi-fi­nal be­tween Paraguay and Uruguay on Sat­ur­day, 6:30 pm TT time at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West, Mona Cam­pus, as the Hock­ey5s Qual­i­fiers con­tin­ued in Kingston, Ja­maica.

Need­ing to win to seal one of two au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing spots from their se­mi-fi­nal, T&T women drew first blood when Fe­li­cia King fired them in­to the lead in the 7th minute.

How­ev­er, their cel­e­bra­tions were short­lived as the USA lev­elled the scores through Lin­nea Gon­za­les in the 9th minute, be­fore the teams went to the break at one goal apiece.

Gon­za­les then scored again five min­utes af­ter the break to give her team a 2-1 ad­van­tage which T&T women did not re­cov­er.

Ear­li­er, the T&T women booked their place in the fi­nal four cour­tesy of a hat-trick from pro­lif­ic cap­tain Krizia Layne-Alexan­der in a com­pre­hen­sive 8-0 drub­bing of Guatemala in their first of two match-pro­gramme on the day.

Layne-Alexan­der, didn't take long to fire the T&T team in­to the lead, af­ter just a minute.

The equal­ly tal­ent­ed Sha­ni­ah De Fre­itas gave the Ca­lyp­so Stick­women a two-goal ad­van­tage in the very next minute, cour­tesy of a field goal, while lit­tle to no re­sis­tance by the Guatemalans, cou­pled with the de­sire to win by the T&T team, led Chelsea Dey to fire in coun­try's third goal for a 3-0 lead from the field in the 6th minute.

Vet­er­an Saman­tha Olton then scored the first of her dou­ble on the day in the 8th minute that hand­ed the women in red, white and black a 4-0 lead. And as the teams head­ed to­wards the break, Layne-Alexan­der added an­oth­er item, and T&T's fifth goal in the 9th minute to a 5-0 ad­van­tage ahead of the team talk.

Af­ter­wards, it was on­ly a mat­ter of for­mal­i­ty as the Guatemalans failed to make a dent in the stur­dy T&T de­fence. Fe­li­cia King made it 6-0 in the 10th minute and Layne-Alexan­der com­plet­ed her hat-trick with a 14th-minute field goal for a 7-0 score­line.

Olton then ham­mered the fi­nal nail in­to the Guatemalan cof­fin to com­plete the 8-0 rout.

T&T's tri­umph, cou­pled with the USA's com­fort­able 3-0 vic­to­ry over the home team in the oth­er quar­ter­fi­nal en­counter, had put the teams on a col­li­sion course with the top two teams set to not on­ly qual­i­fy for the fi­nal but book their places at the 16-team Hock­ey World Cup in Mus­cat, Oman next Jan­u­ary 2024.

In an­oth­er quar­ter­fi­nal game, Paraguay shut out Brazil 2-0.