Goal shoot Maikea Bram­ble was un­stop­pable as she scored 55 goals from 58 at­tempts to lead the Trinidad and To­ba­go se­nior women’s net­ball team—dudged the ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls’—to a con­vinc­ing 61-32 sweep of Cana­da for a fourth straight win in the eight-team Net­ball World Cup Syd­ney 2027 Amer­i­c­as Qual­i­fiers on Fri­day.

Play­ing in the open­ing match of day four at the Sir Garfield Sobers Sports Com­plex, Bridgetown, St. Michael, Bar­ba­dos, Bram­ble, start­ing in place of the rest­ed Eng­land-based Samath­an Wal­lace-Joseph, sig­naled her in­ten­tions to dom­i­nate the en­counter from the on­set and end­ed the first 15-minute quar­ter with a per­fect 17 goals from 17 at­tempts, while cap­tain Kali­fa Mc­Collin chipped in with one from one at­tempt for an 18-6 lead over Cana­da, who got five goals from nine at­tempts from Ladon­na La­m­onth and one from one by Jacque­line Kel­ly.

The sec­ond quar­ter was more of the same from the ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls,’ with Bram­ble con­vert­ing 11 of 12 at­tempts and Mc­Collin a per­fect two goals in a 13-9 quar­ter win to push their lead to 31-15. For Cana­da, goal shoot La­m­onth scored five from 12, and Kel­ly four of five.

In the third pe­ri­od, Bram­ble played a key sup­port­ing role in T&T’s gold medal win in the last Ju­ly. Au­gust-held Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games con­tin­ued her dom­i­nance of the shoot­ing cir­cle, aid­ed by Mc­Collin with 15 goals from 16 at­tempts, in their 17-11 quar­ter win to all but seal vic­to­ry with a 48-26 lead at the end of the third pe­ri­od.

Mc­Collin got the two oth­er goals in the quar­ter for T&T, while Kel­ly had sev­en goals from eight at­tempts, and La­m­onth, four from ten for Cana­da.

The fi­nal pe­ri­od was much more of the same from the world 12th-ranked ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls,’ with Bram­ble adding 12 goals from 13 at­tempts, and Mc­Collin, one from one in their 13-6 quar­ter win, added to their pre­vi­ous wins over Grena­da (61-44), St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines (73-41), and the USA (43-38) as they stayed on track to qual­i­fy for the 2027 World Cup in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, and earn a 16th berth to the World Cup in 17 tries, hav­ing on­ly missed out on Syd­ney 1991.

In the end, Mc­Collin added six goals from as many at­tempts in the win to help car­ry her team to a max­i­mum of 12 points af­ter four match­es, three clear of Bar­ba­dos, while La­m­onth led Cana­da with 18 goals from 37 at­tempts, and Kel­ly tal­lied 14 goals from 17 at­tempts.

In yes­ter­day’s oth­er ear­ly match­es, St. Vin­cent and The Grenadines thrashed the British Vir­gin Is­lands 91-13, led by 71 goals from 74 at­tempts from Mary-Ann Fred­er­ick, while the USA stunned host Bar­ba­dos 43-41 in the third of four match­es be­fore St. Lu­cia faced Grena­da in the late match last night.

To­day, the ‘Ca­lyp­so Girls,’ who were fa­mous­ly joint win­ners of the Net­ball World Cup crown with Aus­tralia and New Zealand in 1979, will meet St. Lu­cia from 6 pm be­fore meet­ing the British Vir­gin Is­lands on Sun­day al­so from 6 pm and then clos­ing out the tour­na­ment ver­sus host Bar­ba­dos in their fi­nal match on Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 26, from 8 pm, in what is ex­pect­ed to be the tour­na­ment de­cider.

At the end of the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion, the top two teams will ad­vance to the 2027 Net­ball World Cup in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, from Au­gust 25 to Sep­tem­ber 5, 2027.

The Amer­i­c­as qual­i­fiers will com­plete the re­gion­al qual­i­fiers, mean­ing these will be the fi­nal two teams to qual­i­fy to be in­vit­ed to the event in Syd­ney, join­ing the hosts, Aus­tralia; Com­mon­wealth Games gold medal­ists, New Zealand; and run­ners-up, Ja­maica, Eng­land, South Africa, Ugan­da, Ton­ga, Samoa, Malawi, Namib­ia, North­ern Ire­land, Scot­land, Sin­ga­pore, Hong Kong, Chi­na who have all al­ready qual­i­fied.

Lat­est Stand­ings

Teams P W D L GF GA GD Pts

1. T&T 4 4 0 0 238 155 83 12

2. Bar­ba­dos 4 3 0 1 235 138 99 9

3. SVG 4 3 0 1 233 175 58 9

4. Cana­da 4 2 0 2 174 157 17 6

5. USA 4 2 0 2 190 176 14 6

6. St Lu­cia 3 1 0 2 140 87 -53 3

7. Grena­da 3 0 0 3 127 195 -68 0

8. BVI 4 0 0 4 58 312 -254 0

Re­main­ing Tour­na­ment fix­tures:

To­day’s match­es

Cana­da vs USA, 2 pm

Grena­da vs BVI, 4 pm

St Lu­cia vs T&T, 6 pm

Bar­ba­dos vs SVG, 8 pm