A bet­ter and more com­pet­i­tive tour­na­ment is be­ing planned by the Ven­tures Hock­ey Club for 2024, fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful com­pe­ti­tion at the week­end.

The De­fence Force and Paragon won the Men’s and Women’s tour­na­ments re­spec­tive­ly, while Queen’s Park, known pop­u­lar­ly as ‘The Parkites’ took the vet­er­an’s crown. Yes­ter­day Cheryl Fran­co, the Ven­tures’ vice pres­i­dent and tour­na­ment di­rec­tor hailed the tour­na­ment as a tremen­dous suc­cess, say­ing it brought the en­tire hock­ey fam­i­ly back to­geth­er. “It has been de­scribed as very or­gan­ised, com­pet­i­tive and ac­cept­ed by the peo­ple in hock­ey,” Fran­co said.

The sport in re­cent time has en­dured a tu­mul­tuous time fol­low­ing the im­pact of the covid-19 pan­dem­ic and re­cent­ly with the death of Michelle Hing-Reynos, a well-known play­er for Check­ers and Shape, who was ex­pect­ed to be one of the judges for their re­cent tour­na­ment. Hing-Reynose died on Christ­mas day and was laid to rest yes­ter­day morn­ing, fol­low­ing a fu­ner­al ser­vice that was well-rep­re­sent­ed by the hock­ey fra­ter­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, Fran­co said she and her team are plan­ning to im­prove the tour­na­ment, come 2024 and they will be­gin so­lic­it­ing feed­back from the var­i­ous clubs on what can be done to im­prove it. Present­ly they are seek­ing to in­crease the num­ber of over­seas clubs, an area where they were hard-hit be­cause of the re­cent re­turn to ac­tive sports in T&T. Oth­er­wise, the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T was al­so a ma­jor de­ter­rent, as it pre­vent­ed Cana­di­an club GOA from com­ing to com­pete.

Fran­co said GOA came twice to their tour­na­ment and won it twice but stayed away this time. A post-mortem on the tour­na­ment is ex­pect­ed to be done soon but or­gan­is­ers are plan­ning to send out in­vi­ta­tions for next year’s tour­na­ment as soon as next week. Mean­while, the host­ing of the tour­na­ment al­so co­in­cid­ed with the club’s (Ven­tures) cel­e­bra­tion of its 95th an­niver­sary in the sport. Fran­co jok­ing­ly said she feels as though she has been there for at least 50 out of the 95, but the club is de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the de­vel­op­ment of the peo­ple and the coun­try.

2023 RE­SULTS

WOMEN

1st- PARAGON

2nd -VEN­TURES

3rd- MAG­NO­LIA

MEN

1st- TTDF

2nd- PO­LICE

3rd- MALVERN

VETS

1st- QPCC

2nd- PO­LICE

MVP

Men (Mick­ell Pierre) -TTDF

Women (Clayza Bobb)- Ven­tures

Vets (Jer­azeno Bell)- QPCC

MOST GOALS

Men (Mar­cus James – 14 Goals)- TTDF

Women (Fe­li­cia King-Ash­by - 7 goals)- Paragon, Saman­tha Olton - 7 goals (Mag­no­lia)

Vets (Col­in Young - 9 goals)- Fa­ti­ma

BEST GOAL­KEEP­ER

Men - Car­los Stephens (TTDF)

Women- Petal Der­ry (Ven­tures)

Vets- Kevin Joseph (TTPS)