GUYANA’S Senior National Women’s Football team – the Lady Jags – started their quest to Brazil for the 2016 Olympic Games on a winning note, after easily disposing of St Kitts and Nevis 8-0 yesterday in the Dominican Republic. Playing at the Estadio Panamericano in San Cristóbal, the Lady Jags were led by a hat-trick from English-based striker Otesha Charles while Mariam El-Masri, Kayla De Souza, Alison Heydorn, Calaigh Copeland and Olivia Gonsalves netted a goal each.
The Guyanese women will now shift their focus to Cuba, with a game against the Spanish-speaking Island tomorrow where they would wrap up their campaign in the Dominican Republic.
Guyana, joined by St Kitts and Cuba, are the teams in Group Three of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) leg of the Qualifiers, with only one team advancing.
Group One will be hosted by Puerto Rico and fields Aruba, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Grenada. Group Two features St Lucia, Antigua & Barbuda, the Cayman Islands and Trinidad & Tobago, to be staged in Trinidad & Tobago.
The Group Three games will be played in Suriname and the teams in this group are Dominica Republic, Dominica and Jamaica.
While the tournament has an age limit of under-23 for men born on or after January 1, 1993, there is no age ceiling for the Women’s Qualifiers.
Three teams will advance from the female category into the CONCACAF Women’s Summer Olympic Tournament for 2016.
The 2016 CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Qualifying Championship qualification will decide the participating teams of the 2016 CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Qualifying Championship, a women’s football tournament to determine which national teams qualify for the women’s football tournament at the 2016 Summer Olympics from the CONCACAF (North, Central America and the Caribbean) region.
A total of eight teams will play in the final tournament – three teams from the North American Zone (NAFU) (Canada, Mexico and the United States, who qualify directly for the final tournament), two teams from the Central American Zone (UNCAF), and three teams from the Caribbean Zone (CFU).
The 2016 CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Qualifying Championship acts as qualification to the 2016 Summer Olympics women’s football tournament for CONCACAF, with the top two teams qualifying.