Source: www.guardian.co.tt
T&T’s Under-17 boys were hoping to exact revenge on Colombia when both teams faced off for the bronze medal at the 2011 UANA Junior Pan American Championship in San Juan, Puerto Rico last night. This, after losing to Brazil 5-13 in their semifinal encounter on Friday night, its second loss to the South Americans following a 5-17 thrashing in their round-robin meeting. According to team manager, Peter Gillette, the improvement against the Brazilians was due to an allround team effort, in addition to the superb goalkeeping of Sebastian Van Reeken who made 14 saves. The showing by T&T in the semifinal loss was also achieved without the services of top local scorer and captain Daniel Tardieu, who was injured in final round-robin clash with USA. He will also miss the bronze medal match against Colombia, which defeated the T&T Polo Warriors 10-6 in their round-robin clash.
However, T&T was the only team to defeat eventual champions, Colombia at the South American Championship in April and was hoping for a similar outcome last night. The T&T team has already qualified for the Junior World Water Polo Championships to be held in Perth, Australia in 2012, after earning themselves a semifinal spot in the tournament. In the seven-team round-robin series, T&T ended with a 3-3 record after beating last year’s winners’ Canada (8-6), South American semifinalists Peru (10-6), and reigning Central American and Caribbean Nations champions, Puerto Rico (5-4).
The defeats came against Brazil (5-17), Colombia (6-10) and USA (5-7). The local girls’ team failed to reach the semifinal after consecutive losses to Puerto Rico (8-14), USA (0-22), Canada (0-27) and Brazil (4-22). Both teams are expected to return home tonight via Liat at 7.15 pm.