Grant, Davidson whip USVI 2-0

T&T women beach vol­ley­ballers Rheeza Grant and Ma­li­ka David­son did as they promised and im­proved to earn the right to play for 13th spot af­ter down­ing US Vir­gin Is­lands (USVI), 2-0, at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru on Sat­ur­day.

"To­day was pret­ty good. We played con­fi­dence and I guess we gelled more to­geth­er to­day (yes­ter­day) than all the oth­er days be­ing here and our bod­ies were a lit­tle bit more ac­cli­ma­tized to the weath­er," said Grant, still rue­ing over the missed op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­feat Cos­ta Ri­ca on Fri­day, falling to a 2-0 loss af­ter lead­ing for much of the match.

"We were so, so hap­py about the win. More wins to come over time," said Grant. "The game yes­ter­day (Fri­day) we were re­al­ly emo­tion­al be­cause we want­ed to win it so bad­ly even if we had to go the third set.

"We were re­al­ly push­ing re­al­ly hard and I guess the team that had the most ex­pe­ri­ence won on that day be­cause the team we played had more ex­pe­ri­ence than us but not deny­ing that fact, we gave it our all."

In their 13th-16th place­ment play­off match at the Beach Vol­ley­ball Sta­di­um, the lo­cal duo elim­i­nat­ed much of the er­rors that had plagued them dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary round which saw them placed last in their pool.

How­ev­er, the na­tion­al vol­ley­ballers bounced back well to win in straight sets 21-8, 21-10, to play for 13th spot against El Sal­vador.

"We are con­fi­dent that we will bring home that wins. El Sal­vador is a more de­fen­sive team than us and they have a lot more ex­pe­ri­ence than us but we are go­ing to play with heart, pas­sion and soul and at the end of the day, we are go­ing to put our best foot for­ward and we know that with that, we can win the game."

T&T men's team of Mar­lon Phillip and Daynte Stew­art placed 15th af­ter de­feat­ing Pe­ru, 2-0 (21-19, 21-16).

Ear­li­er, the lo­cal pair lost to Cos­ta Ri­ca 1-2 (21-19, 16-21, 12-15).

Shoot­ing

Mar­sha Bullen-Jones placed 25th in the women's 10m air pis­tol with a to­tal of 533 in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round. She shot 86 in the open­ing se­ries, then fol­lowed up with 91 be­fore reg­is­ter­ing 86, 91, 87 and 92 in the re­main­ing se­ries but did not ad­vance as on­ly the top eight shoot­ers progress to the fi­nal.

Rug­by

It was an­oth­er tough day for T&T rug­by women as they suc­cumbed to two heavy de­feats in fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary match­es.

In the morn­ing ses­sion, the lo­cal unit led by cap­tain Nic­ho­lette Pan­tor went un­der to Co­lum­bia, 38-10 at the

Some four hours lat­er, T&T, who lost its open­ing match 55-0 to the USA the day be­fore, re­turned to the field to face off against Ar­genti­na but once again out­played, los­ing by an­oth­er huge mar­gin, 46-0.

To­day though, the na­tion­al rug­by team will seek to re­bound from this win­less run in its matchup ver­sus the host coun­try Pe­ru in the fifth to eighth place­ment play­off match from 10.10 am (T&T time).

Box­ing

Nigel Paul lost out to Cami­lo Co­dazzi in their quar­ter­fi­nal bout in the men's su­per heavy­weight (91+kg) class.

The Columbian got the nod from the judges over the T&T box­er 5-0 at the Miguel Grau Col­i­se­um.

To­day, T&T's Ty­ron Thomas gets his chance in the ring against Ro­han Polan­co from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

"It did not go the way we planned. It was al­ways go­ing to be a hard bout for us, hav­ing lost twice to this guy be­fore but we are re­main fo­cus no on Qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the 2020 Olympic games," said coach Reynold Cox.

"In the bout, I think Paul could have done more he needs to be­lieve in his tech­nique more to over­come in these tough bouts.

Ca­noe sprint

Matthew Robin­son was un­for­tu­nate­ly elim­i­nat­ed in the men's kayak sin­gles 1,000m af­ter plac­ing eighth and last in heat one.

Com­pet­ing at the Al­bufera Medio Mun­do, he crossed eighth with a time of four min­utes and 33.159 sec­onds.

Lat­er, Robin­son teamed up with broth­er Nicholas and pro­gressed to semi­fi­nals in the men's kayak dou­ble 1,000m but that is far as they reached af­ter plac­ing last of the sev­en teams with 4:17.392.

Ear­li­er In the heat one, the pair ad­vanced with the slow­est time of 4:12.806 in plac­ing sixth to move on.

To­day Nicholas will com­pete out of lane two as he goes for glo­ry in the men's 200m kayak sin­gles from 11.50 am.

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