U-14 girls savour CFU Challenge experience

The T&T girls won two match­es con­vinc­ing­ly against Grena­da and Suri­name, be­fore los­ing to Cu­ba 2-1 on the fi­nal match­day to fin­ish run­ners up in Group 5 be­hind Cu­ba.

Coach Mar­lon Charles said prepa­ra­tions will con­tin­ue lat­er this month for the CON­CA­CAF U-15 Girls Cham­pi­onship next year.

“Over­all it was a good ex­er­cise for us and I was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the way the girls took on the chal­lenge of play­ing their first set of games in front of the pub­lic. When you see a set of young play­ers giv­ing every­thing for their coun­try on the field of play it leaves you with a sense of sat­is­fac­tion and en­cour­age­ment of what there is to look for­ward to,” Charles said.

“These girls have shown me the hunger and de­sire to do well for the coun­try, to get back up no mat­ter what the score in the game is, as they showed in the sec­ond half against Cu­ba. I can­not fault them for the ef­fort they gave af­ter go­ing be­hind 2-1. There is a lot of work to be done still but it’s a process and the good thing for us is that we are see­ing good signs and a will­ing­ness to work and im­prove. This augers well for us. The de­vel­op­ment part is the main thing at this stage and we are see­ing some form of progress,” Charles added.

Pro­lif­ic scor­er Bre­ana Smith scored six goals in her first two match­es, and yes­ter­day said she was de­light­ed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent her coun­try.

“It was an un­be­liev­able ex­pe­ri­ence. It was a dream come true for me to come on the field and score five goals in my first game. I would like to thank my coach Mar­lon Charles and Keron Hinds be­cause I was al­ways one of those play­ers in the back of the squad and they start­ed to push me and things start­ed to get eas­i­er for me. They helped give me that be­lief that I could go out and do some­thing."

She not­ed, “We have a style of play that in­volved a lot of ball pos­ses­sion and I think that was im­por­tant for us to un­der­stand.”

“It was an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing able to wear the colours of T&T and even greater to score for the team. I had been to Trinidad be­fore but I didn’t know what to ex­pect this time be­cause it was my first time play­ing with the team in a tour­na­ment. But I came in and it was just a great pe­ri­od."

“I just love play­ing for T&T. I want to con­tin­ue play­ing and be­ing part of this amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence with every­one. I know there’s more work for us to do as a team but I’m look­ing for­ward to every bit of it,” Smith said.