THE Guyana Under-21 women’s hockey team is scheduled to compete in the 2023 Junior Pan American Championships scheduled for 10 – 18 April in Bridgetown, Barbados. This will be the first ever junior women’s team to represent the country in any competition.

Seven junior women’s teams will be competing in the female competition which is a qualifier for the 2023 Junior World Cup being held in Santiago, Chile in December. While there is no official ranking for junior teams, Guyana’s women’s team is ranked #72 in the world and in these championships, the Guyanese girls come up against #14 Chile, #15 Canada and #41 Barbados.

The other pool in the competition will feature #2 ranked Argentina, #16 USA and #25 Uruguay.

While the Guyanese squad features a few experienced players in Captain Makeda Harding, Sarah Klautky, Clayza Bobb, Kirsten Gomes, Abosaide Cadogan and Madison Fernandes, the rest of the squad are new to international competition and most will be seeing a hockey artificial grass field for the first time in their lives.

The players were robbed of a full calendar of competition for the last few years, as the COVID pandemic interrupted the usual hockey calendar of local events. While the players have been committed to the preparation programme, the unfortunate weather early in the year rendered most fields unusable and forced the players indoors to the national gymnasium for training. According to coach Philip Fernandes, these conditions were far from optimal and places a further strain on the country’s ability to produce successful teams. Fernandes expressed disappointment that, after more than twenty years of requests, the Federation is no closer to securing an artificial surface for hockey which all other teams in the Pan American Federation have.

“While all other teams consistently train on full sized artificial surfaces year-round, just because these players are born in Guyana, they have to make do with thick grass fields which are often unavailable, a reduced sized gymnasium, a small basketball court-sized carpeted surface or the once-per-week national stadium training. Our players deserve better than this and I am hopeful that someday the commitment and passion of our players will be rewarded with suitable facilities that can enable greater success,” said Fernandes. When asked about the Providence artificial football field, Fernandes indicated that while the field would be ideal, the GFF had indicated a fear of their warranty being voided and therefore they could not allow hockey to train there.

There are no easy matches in this competition as Guyana is the lowest ranked team in the competition, the only team making its international debut and the only team featuring players who have never played the game on an artificial surface. Fernandes indicated that, while expectations are modest, the team has to start somewhere, and if competition comes as close as Barbados and our players don’t participate, they will never gain the experience needed to be competitive in the future.

Guyana will face Canada in its very first match on Tuesday 11th April at 11:00AM followed by hosts Barbados the following afternoon at 1:30PM and completes its pool round matches against Chile on Friday April 14th at 12:00 noon. The tournament will then go to crossovers with the other pool with the finals being played on Tuesday 18th April at 3:30PM.