T&T fin­ished as run­ners-up in its in­ter­na­tion­al de­but at the Amer­i­c­as Net­ball Men’s Cham­pi­onships, which end­ed in St. Kitts and Nevis on Wednes­day night.

The na­tion­al team’s sec­ond-placed fin­ish means the lo­cal unit, coached by Pietra Gay, a for­mer bas­ket­baller and net­ball play­er, has qual­i­fied for the 2026 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games.

“As the coach of the team, I couldn’t be proud­er of our play­ers for their per­for­mance in this tour­na­ment. Fin­ish­ing sec­ond is a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion the team has put in through­out the sea­son,” said Gay yes­ter­day.

“While we aimed for the top spot, this re­sult high­lights the progress we’ve made and the po­ten­tial we have for fu­ture suc­cess. 

In T&T’s fi­nal match on Wednes­day night at the Pam Tyson Net­ball Sta­di­um in St Kitts against vis­it­ing team Eng­land, the lo­cal team had to set­tle for a 44-44 draw af­ter lead­ing for much of the match. 

Both teams en­tered the match with the same record five and a loss against even­tu­al cham­pi­on Ja­maica, who played un­beat­en through­out the eight-team tour­na­ment.

Against the Eng­lish­men, Gay, who al­so coach­es bas­ket­ball along with as­sis­tant coach Oba­di­ah “Bud­dha” Ash­er, opened with re­li­able goal-shoot­er Dex­troy Man­swell and goal-at­tack­er Keon Rus­sell, who named MVP of the team, but de­spite their valiant ef­fort, T&T trailed by one (11-10) at the close of the first quar­ter.

She stuck with the duo in the sec­ond quar­ter be­fore re­plac­ing Rus­sell with cap­tain Steve Mc­Sween, and he com­bined with Man­swelll to pull T&T ahead 23-20 at half­time. On the re­sump­tion, play re­mained in favour of the Caribbean team, and it pulled fur­ther ahead head­ing in­to the fourth pe­ri­od, clos­ing the third ses­sion with a five-goal ad­van­tage.

But the Eng­lish team did not go away and made a come­back to tie the scores in the fi­nal minute of the match-up. Ker­ry McMil­lan, who was lat­er named the “Most Valu­able Play­er” for T&T, was in­stalled in the cir­cle and he had a chance to win the clash af­ter win­ning a penal­ty. How­ev­er, he missed the shot, and the scores re­mained tied when time ex­pired there­after.

Though dis­ap­point­ed by the draw, T&T was hap­py for the 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. T&T’s lone loss came on Tues­day night ver­sus Ja­maica, 62-49.

“Every game was a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, and we’ll use this as mo­ti­va­tion to con­tin­ue im­prov­ing and striv­ing for ex­cel­lence. I want to ex­tend my grat­i­tude to the sup­port­ers, the tech­ni­cal team, and the play­ers for their in­cred­i­ble ef­forts and com­mit­ment to the sport of net­ball,” said coach Gay, who, along with Ash­er, are among the bas­ket­ball coach­es tran­si­tion­ing to net­ball and coach­ing at the na­tion­al lev­el. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Wes­ley “Pepe” Gomes and Learie “Fruits” Sandy had stints coach­ing the na­tion­al se­nior women’s team.

T&T fin­ished among the top five teams that qual­i­fied for the CAC Games. The oth­ers are cham­pi­on Ja­maica, third-placed St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG), Grena­da, and the host coun­try, which placed fourth and fifth, re­spec­tive­ly.