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Fernandes hails spirited performance from women’s team at Jr Pan Am Hockey C/Ship
By Rawle Toney
Kaieteur News – It was a spirited performance by Guyana’s women’s team in their second match at the Junior Pan Am Championship, but they fell 0-8 yesterday to an unbeaten Chile side.
Chile’s Laura Muller makes her way through Guyana’s defence in his side’s 8-0 win
Having secured an impressive 3 – 0 win over Barbados in their previous match, the Guyanese women were chasing another three points to keep their hopes alive of advancing out of Group B, which also includes the USA.
However, though showing lots of promise in their first Junior Pan Am Championships, Guyana was outplayed by more skilful and well-oiled Chilean women.
Martina Lira (2′, 9′) and Victoria Arrieta (57′, 58′) had a double against Guyana, while Chile’s other goals came from Laura Müller (14′), Francisca Irazoqui (31′), Josefina Gutierrez (39′) and Monserrat Obon (48′).
Head Coach, Phillip Fernandes, speaking exclusively with Kaieteur News from Barbados, applauded his team’s effort.
According to Fernandes, Guyana has one of the youngest teams in the tournament, “remember, this is an under 21 tournaments, so the average age of the big nations will be 20, while our team, the average age probably is somewhere around 17. We have a 13-year-old, and we have some 15-year-olds and so-on. It is a building for the future for us.
“Coupled with the fact that we had some bad weather at the beginning of the year, which made us unable to train properly because the grass fields were out, means that we had some very adverse conditions and we were preparing for something much bigger than that,” Fernandes said.
Julia Gouveia against Chile’s Laura Salamanca during their Junior Pan Am Hockey C/Ship match.
Fernandes, who also holds the position of Guyana Hockey Board’s president believes “the girls did their best, they tried hard today, it was a loss against Chile by eight goals to love. But when you take it into context, Chile beat Canada by four goals to love.”
“And so we can see improvement in our team as we usually do incrementally with every game that we play. And I’m very proud of them. I think they did a fantastic job yesterday and today. The game against Canada was the toughest because it was the first on the turf,” Fernandes highlighted.
The long-serving Hockey administrator is hoping that the GHB’s issue of not having a turf in Guyana for hockey is remedied by the relevant sports organisation, “I hope that going into the future we would have the kind of surfaces on which to practice so that we won’t be practising in the first games of the tournament, but we can do that beforehand.”
This year’s Junior Pan Am Hockey Championships marks the first time Guyana is participating in the female fraction of the tournament.
While the men’s tournament started in 1978, the women’s championship came on stream in 1988.
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