THE Guyana Football Federation (GFF) will turn to their more experienced overseas-based players for the April 23-30 CFU Women’s Challenge, as the Lady Jags, the country’s senior women’s national team, travel to Trinidad and Tobago for the first-of-a-kind tournament.

Twelve of the 20 players shortlisted by the GFF will come from overseas, with the squad consisting of two goalkeepers, five defenders, nine midfielders and four forwards from both the Guyana and international-based pool of players.

The announcement was made yesterday at a team meeting held for the Guyana-based players at the Boardroom of the GFF by Akilah Castello, newly-appointed assistant coach.

Also present at the meeting were Ian Greenwood, GFF’s Technical Director and Eon De Vieira, the Guyana-based goalkeeping coach respectively.

“The coaching staff is looking forward to these exhibition matches to build cohesion as well as to assess playing strengths of the team,” said head coach Dr Ivan Joseph.

“We are looking forward to the Challenge Series and have the ‘Lady Jags’ back on the pitch to compete in a high level environment. Our goal is to use this tournament as a building block to prepare our team for the first round matches of the CONCACAF Women’s Qualifiers in May.”

Dr Joseph said the team will use the opportunity for structured team-building, pointing out that “this is the first step in our goal; to qualify for the CONCACAF finals in October. We have many new faces on the team as well as new staff and in order to perform at our best in the coming months, we must ensure that we are all on the same page.”

The recently-appointed Lady Jags coach said the tournament will be used as a training environment to assess the players, and “it is also an opportunity for the team to get some much-needed time together to build a game plan and structure that will help us succeed.”

Guyana have been placed in Group E of the five-group tournament with Suriname and Grenada and will have their first match against Grenada on April 25 at the Ato Boldon Stadium, beginning at 16:00hrs.

Guyana’s second match is scheduled for April 27, at 16:00hrs against Suriname and will face hosts Trinidad and Tobago on the April 29 at 17:30hrs.

The format includes four teams each in five groups, where the matches in each group will be played in round-robin format.

The tournament will be held from April 18 to 29 and will be played in St Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica, Haiti, Antigua and Barbuda and Trinidad and Tobago.

SQUAD: Goalkeeper: Aneesa O’Brien (Canada), Natalie Nedd (Guyana). Defenders: Sasha James (Guyana), Rylee Traicoff, Nikkita Persaud, Jessica Meyers and Jade Vyfhuis (Canada). Midfielders: Nailah Rowe, Julia Gonsalves, Brianne DeSa, Calaigh Copland (Canada), Allison Heydorn (USA), Mariam El-Masri (Singapore). Siacy Adams, Shontel Greene, Tiandi Smith (Guyana). Forwards: Brittany Persaud, Jimmaica Hunte, Annalisa Vincent and Lakeisha Pearson (Guyana).