PHILIPSBURG--Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada; in that order, emerged as the three qualifiers at the end of the U21 World Youth Netball Qualifiers for the Americas Federation of Netball Association (AFNA) at L.B. Scott Sports Auditorium last night.
Those three teams will join Jamaica as the teams qualifying from this region for the Youth World Cup in Botswana next year July.
The Bajan Gems remained the unbeaten team of the qualifier with 12 points. Barbados completed six wins in the tournament, which featured seven teams. The points for the other teams that participated in the qualifiers were Trinidad and Tobago on 10 points (5-1), Grenada on eight points (4-2), St. Kitts and Canada on four points each at (2-4), St. Maarten on two points (1-5) and Argentina winless after six matches.
The most anticipated match of the tournament, between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, was a thrilling encounter last night. At the start of the qualifiers, they entered the tournament as the two top-seeded teams in world netball: Trinidad and Tobago at ninth and Barbados at 13th place.
Last night, the Bajan Gems gave points to their rankings with a hard-fought 50 to 48 win over their archrivals.
Bajan Gems Coach Sandra Bruce-Small stated the importance of the win in an invited comment to The Daily Herald: “Any win against Trinidad and Tobago is always sweet. We have a history of rivalry. I’m ecstatic!”
Although the match was keenly contested from the first to the last minute, the Bajans managed to keep their noses just ahead of their nemesis.
Barbados led for most of the match with as many as seven goals in the second quarter, but Trinidad and Tobago tied the scores at 34 apiece in the third quarter, through an acrobatic shot from the Goal Attack. At the end of the third quarter, the Trinis were leading at 39 to 37.
The Bajans came out determined to regain and went ahead at 41 to 40 early in the fourth quarter and thereafter never gave their opponents a sniff at the leading again.
Goal Shooter for Barbados Shonica Wharton, with her intimidating physique and tremendous agility, led her team with 46 goals from 53 attempts. She is currently a member of the Barbados national team.
The coach identified Wharton, her sister Shanice, Shaniqua Thomas and Amanda Knight as the most outstanding players for her team, although she was quick to hail the contributions of the whole squad which worked together as a team.
“The other players gave very good support.” stated coach Bruce-Small. She also gave this newspaper an insight as to how her team will prepare for next year’s World Cup: “When we return to Barbados, the girls will go on six weeks of active rest and then we will begin training in October.”
In the last match of the qualifiers, St. Maarten lost to Canada by 40 to 29. For St. Maarten, Goal Attack Odesa Mc Bean led the way with 18 out of 24 attempts. The other scorers were Goal Shooter Jamaiah Newton-Herbert with 10 out of 11 tries and Kayla Robinson with one out of four attempts.
The main scorers for Canada were Goal Shooter Talia Tvergyak with 21 out of 30 attempts and Holly Butterworth with 19 out of 29 attempts.
