Dar­ren Cowie heads a strong 21-man squad for the Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey (FIH) In­door Hock­ey World Cup at the Za­ti­ka Are­na in Croa­t­ia in 2025, from Feb­ru­ary 3-9.

Sharpe shoot­er Teague Mar­cano was al­so cho­sen by coach Raphael Govia and is ex­pect­ed from his Eng­lish club Hol­combe Hock­ey Club in the Eng­lish Pre­mier Hock­ey League.

T&T's se­nior men’s team took the sil­ver medal in a 5-2 loss to Ar­genti­na in the fi­nal of the In­door Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Cup in Al­ber­ta, Cana­da ear­li­er this year.

That match was mere­ly a mat­ter of for­mal­i­ty as both the Ar­gen­tines and the Trin­bag­o­ni­ans had al­ready earned qual­i­fy­ing berths by virtue of their semi­fi­nal wins over USA (5-4) and Guyana (10-0), re­spec­tive­ly in the tour­na­ment.

In ad­di­tion to Cowie, who came out of re­tire­ment, and Mar­cano, Govia al­so named Dwain Quan Chan, an­oth­er re­tiree seek­ing a place on the team, as well as Aidan De Gannes, Arielle Bowen, Lyn­del By­er, Solomon Ec­cles, Jor­dan Viera, Daniel By­er, Dy­lan Fran­cis and Tar­rell Singh, among oth­er play­ers.

Govia said, "It's that time of the tri­als process, the guys had a good run of ses­sions but it's crunch time, hap­py hour is over. It's time to iso­late and iden­ti­fy ar­eas to sharp­en up on cer­tain ar­eas like at­tack­ing and de­fen­sive cor­ners, Akim Tou­s­saint and I will be do­ing that with­in the next few ses­sions, in­cor­po­rat­ing a lot of games to view the use of all skills used in the last few months."

The FIH In­door Hock­ey event promis­es to be one of the most ex­cit­ing events in the in­door hock­ey cal­en­dar, as it will bring the world’s top teams for a fast-paced, ac­tion-packed tour­na­ment in the his­toric city of Poreč, Croa­t­ia.

The T&T men's team has been drawn in Pool C along­side Bel­gium, Aus­tralia, and Namib­ia. The oth­er groups will fea­ture, Pool A: Aus­tria, South Africa, Poland, and the home team Croa­t­ia; and Pool B: Iran, Ar­genti­na, Ger­many, and Malaysia.

Among the women's teams: Pool A: Czechia, Bel­gium, USA, and Croa­t­ia; Pool B: Aus­tria, South Africa, Poland, and Thai­land; and Pool C: Aus­tralia, Ger­many, Namib­ia, and New Zealand. The top eight teams from across the three pools will qual­i­fy for the quar­ter­fi­nals, while the re­main­ing teams will play in the 9-12 po­si­tion play­offs.

Govia said he will al­low his play­ers to par­tic­i­pate in an in­door tour­na­ment in Guyana next week. He said he in­tends to go to the tour­na­ment to keep an eye on the per­for­mances of the play­ers.

T&T squad:

Ron Alexan­der, Kar­los Stephens, Mal­colm 'Sug­ars' Bap­tiste, Reiza Ho­sein, Shaquille Daniel, Jor­dan Reynos, Aidan De Gannes, Arielle Bowen, Lyn­del By­er, Solomon Ec­cles, Dwain Quan Chan, Dar­ren Cowie (Cpt), Jor­dan Viera, Daniel By­er, Tar­rell Singh, Teague Mar­cano, Do­minic Young, Mikel Pierre, Dy­lan Fran­cis, Joel Daniel, Nicholas Siu Butt