Glen "Fi­do" Fran­cis, the T&T U-21 men’s hock­ey coach, says his team’s ti­tle win at the Ju­nior Pan Am Chal­lenge, 3-1 over Brazil at the Sir Garfield Sobers Sports Com­plex Hock­ey Cen­tre in Wildey, Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos, on Sun­day was all part of their learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

Led by two goals from Wayne Ed­wards, the Ju­nior ‘Ca­lyp­so Stick­men’ over­came a 1-0 deficit with Nicholas Siu Butt scor­ing the oth­er as they avenged a 1-0 loss suf­fered a day ear­li­er in their fi­nal round-robin match.

Go­ing in­to the fi­nal, both Brazil, who topped the six-team round-robin phase with five wins from as many match­es for 15 points, and T&T (10 points) were al­ready as­sured of qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Paraguay from Au­gust 10-19.

Speak­ing on ar­rival at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Mon­day night, an elat­ed Fran­cis was quick to point out the pos­i­tives of his team’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­pe­ti­tion, which end­ed in gold­en cel­e­bra­tions.

Pri­or to the win over Brazil in the fi­nal, T&T flicked off their cam­paign with a 1-1 draw with host Bar­ba­dos be­fore beat­ing Guyana 2-0, Guatemala 5-0 and Venezuela 4-2, and Fran­cis, a for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er and cap­tain, not­ed that the tour­na­ment was the first time par­tic­i­pat­ing at an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el for more than 90 per cent of the play­ers.

He said, “So, with ba­si­cal­ly an in­ex­pe­ri­enced group of play­ers, the tour­na­ment was re­al­ly good for us in gen­er­al.”

In com­mend­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion shown through­out, the T&T coach, who was as­sist­ed by for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain Akim Tou­s­saint, said, “The guys re­al­ly worked hard to be suc­cess­ful in this tour­na­ment; they en­dured a lot of sleep­less nights and al­so a lot of hard work by the tech­ni­cal staff.”

“In ad­di­tion, with the sup­port of all the en­ti­ties, like the T&T De­fence Force Re­cov­ery Unit, as well as ses­sions with Pe­ter Samuel in the swim­ming pool and the many oth­er units who sup­port­ed us, I must say ku­dos to them as well.”

He added, “Again, ku­dos to the young guys be­cause they re­al­ly put out a lot and made a lot of sac­ri­fices. When every­body was sleep­ing, the guys were work­ing hard, and dur­ing the car­ni­val pe­ri­od, they were not out­side but were work­ing hard and try­ing to be suc­cess­ful in this tour­na­ment, and I think we can say it paid off in the end.”

Asked how the team’s late ar­rival to the tour­na­ment (two days be­fore their open­ing match) af­fect­ed their ap­proach, Fran­cis replied, “I’m not one to make ex­cus­es, but yes, our ar­rival to the tour­na­ment was late, two days shy of our first match, so we went with a good mind­set and man­aged to get in a train­ing ses­sion be­fore the match even though it was not on the pitch that we played on for the com­pe­ti­tion.”

“And I think that helped the guys, and we grad­u­al­ly grew game by game. The first game we drew 1-all, and the oth­ers we won, and we kept get­ting bet­ter.

“We lost our last round-robin game against Brazil af­ter we had al­ready qual­i­fied for the fi­nal against the same team, and how they adapt­ed in that game was re­al­ly good.”

With re­gard to the fi­nal against Brazil, Fran­cis said, ‘We re­al­ly set our­selves up men­tal­ly and tac­ti­cal­ly for the fi­nal, and the guys ex­e­cut­ed ex­cel­lent­ly to get the win.

Look­ing ahead, Fran­cis said he was look­ing for­ward to his play­ers re­turn­ing to train­ing at home at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua.

Con­trary to what has been said, Fran­cis said the sur­face at the Tacarigua fa­cil­i­ty, which was re­cent­ly re­laid af­ter more than six years in wait­ing, was a good one.

He boast­ed, “The sur­face here (Tacarigua) is pret­ty good, and while a lot of peo­ple have said a lot about it, I think it’s an ex­cel­lent pitch.”

“I have been in the sport for a long time, and I have been to a lot of places and played on a lot of pitch­es, and I be­lieve the pitch in T&T is an ex­cel­lent one.”

“In time we just need to keep play­ing on it, and I re­al­ly hope that we get to use it a lot’, stat­ed Fran­cis.

“Again, the man­age­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty was ex­cel­lent with us, and we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a live-in camp for the car­ni­val pe­ri­od, which I think al­so as­sist­ed us in our en­deav­ours of win­ning.”

T&T was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by the Ju­nior “Ca­lyp­so Stick­women’ , who missed out on the bronze medal af­ter a 1-0 loss to Guyana in their third-place play­off.

In their oth­er match­es in the com­pe­ti­tion, the Kristin Thomp­son-coached women’s team were out­classed by Mex­i­co 8-0 and Puer­to Ri­co 13-0 be­fore edg­ing past Bar­ba­dos 2-1 for their first and on­ly win.

The lo­cal women al­so drew goal­less with Guatemala and were beat­en 1-0 by Guyana in their fi­nal round-robin match ahead of both teams meet­ing for the bronze.

De­spite miss­ing out on a top-two fin­ish and qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games, Fran­cis had some words of en­cour­age­ment for the mem­bers of the team, say­ing, “The girls are pret­ty young, and they have a bright fu­ture, and I re­al­ly hope they stick to­geth­er.”

“They re­al­ly fight and give their best ef­fort, and I know they re­al­ly need a lit­tle more sup­port, and I hope that they get it,” end­ed Fran­cis.

Fi­nal Stand­ings

Men’s Div

Brazil 5 5 0 0 22 3 15

T&T 5 3 1 1 12 5 10

Venezuela 5 3 0 2 7 7 9

Bar­ba­dos 5 1 2 2 8 14 5

Guyana 5 1 1 3 6 7 4

Guatemala 5 0 0 5 3 22 0

Women’s Div

Teams P W D L F A Pts

Mex­i­co 5 5 0 0 44 1 15

Puer­to Ri­co 5 4 0 1 38 3 12

Guyana 5 3 0 2 6 9 9

T&T 5 1 1 3 2 23 4

Bar­ba­dos 5 1 0 4 8 19 3

Guatemala 5 0 1 4 0 43 1