Trinidad and To­ba­go Un­der 21 net­ballers will face St Maarten in their open­ing match of the 2025 World Net­ball Youth Cup Amer­i­c­as Qual­i­fiers in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guade­loupe, to­mor­row morn­ing at 8 am.

The lo­cal team de­part­ed Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port for Guade­loupe on yes­ter­day af­ter­noon ahead of to­day’s first day of com­pe­ti­tion.

The tour­na­ment was due yes­ter­day but was de­layed by one day due to the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl which hit sev­er­al coun­tries in the Caribbean over the past sev­en days. The weath­er sys­tem in­ter­rupt­ed air trav­el in the re­gion.

The oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries—Ja­maica, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Grena­da, and the Cay­man Is­lands—were all im­pact­ed most­ly by the first-named hur­ri­cane of the 2024 sea­son. St Vin­cent and the Grenadines have since with­drawn from the com­pe­ti­tion.

The T&T team is drawn in Group B along with Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, and St Maarten and hosts Guade­loupe.

The Ca­lyp­so Girls will bat­tle St Maarten in a morn­ing fix­ture and the home team, Guade­loupe in their sec­ond match on Ju­ly 9, at 7 pm.

One day lat­er, the Khal­i­fa Mc Collin-Lopez-coached na­tion­al squad will square off against An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, al­so from 7 pm.

The na­tion­al squad will close its Pool B sched­ule on Ju­ly 11 against arch-ri­vals Bar­ba­dos at 7 pm.

For­mer Net­ball World Youth Cup run­ners-up Ja­maica is a top-rat­ed team in Pool A with Grena­da, Cay­man Is­lands, and Cana­da com­plet­ing the line­up. Ja­maica won sil­ver in 2000 and bronze in 2013.

The Cay­man Is­lands and Cana­da will square off in the tour­na­ment’s cur­tain-rais­er to­day from 10 am.

Coach Collin-Lopez says the play­ers are fo­cused on ex­celling de­spite the one-day de­lay. “It was te­dious and men­tal­ly stress­ful for the girls. How­ev­er, we tried to en­sure that stayed as a unit fo­cused on what was up­com­ing. We con­nect­ed via Zoom and What­sApp calls and I think that helped us keep our minds on track.”

Mc Collin-Lopez added that the aim is to qual­i­fy for next year’s World Youth Cup. “We know what we have to do. We know it is go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult. All of the teams are ready and are go­ing to play for a three-po­si­tion (to qual­i­fy for Gibral­tar). We have to take it game by game, go out there, com­pete and give of our best.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia be­fore the team’s de­par­ture to Guade­loupe, the for­mer pro­fes­sion­al net­baller said a win against St Maarten will be a good start in the week-long qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion. “It is def­i­nite­ly im­por­tant to show­case what we are ca­pa­ble of against St Maarten. I told the girls not to hold back (and) do what ex­act­ly we would have learned in our train­ing ses­sions, ex­e­cute the set plays, and go out there and per­form.”

The open­ing cer­e­mo­ny is sched­uled for lat­er this af­ter­noon at 5.30 pm, to be fol­lowed by host team Guade­loupe tak­ing on An­tigua and Bar­bu­da at 7 pm.

The teams will play a round-robin for­mat in each group and the top two teams in each pool will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nal round set for Ju­ly 13 with the fi­nal set for the fol­low­ing day.

The top three teams from the qual­i­fiers will ad­vance to the 2025 Net­ball World Youth Cup (NWYC) in Gibral­tar from Sep­tem­ber 19-28.

The NWYC was last host­ed in Gaborone, Botswana in 2017.

Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pet­ed in the 2017 tour­na­ment and fin­ished 14th. The 2021 edi­tion was can­celled due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

The T&T team:

Des­tiny Williams, Jeni­cia Goodridge, Neke­sha Gomes, N’zin­ga Charles, Ker­lene John­son, Xhane’ Gray, Maikea Bram­ble, Jelis­sia Goodridge, haniya Mor­gan, Shi­an Lewis, Kayleea Songui, Aneisha Hyles, Nichola Gill, Kat­ty Ann Gra­ham, Ja­da Hamil­ton

Tech­ni­cal Staff

Coach-Kali­fa Mc Collin

As­sis­tant Coach-Crys­tal Ann George

Man­ag­er-Vanes­sa Forde.

Pool A

Ja­maica

Grena­da

Cay­man Is­lands

Cana­da

Pool B

Trinidad and To­ba­go

Bar­ba­dos

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da

St Maarten

Guade­loupe

Mon­day’s match­es

Cay­man Is­lands vs Cana­da, 10 am

Bar­ba­dos vs St. Maarten, Noon

Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny, 5.30 pm

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da vs Guade­loupe, 7 pm