Daniel off target in Peru

Shoot­er Roger Daniel had the lone chance to win T&T's first medal of the Pan Amer­i­can Games, but that aim went off tar­get when he placed 13th dur­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round in the men's 10m air pis­tol event at the in­door 10-me­ter air pis­tol sta­di­um at the Base Aerea Las Pal­mas in Li­ma, Pe­ru on Sun­day.

On the third of­fi­cial day of com­pe­ti­tion at the Games, the 2011 Pan Am sil­ver medal­list scored 565 af­ter pro­duc­ing 94 in the first round, then fol­lowed up with 95 in the sec­ond round, then dropped in the third with 93 be­fore clos­ing with 94, 94 and 95 in the fi­nal three rounds too place out­side of the qual­i­fy­ing po­si­tions. On­ly the top eight shoot­ers ad­vance to the medal round.

On Mon­day, Daniel re­turns to ac­tion and will part­ner with Mar­sha Bullen-Jones at they look to qual­i­fy for the medal round in the mixed team 10m air pis­tol from 10 am (T&T time)

Al­so aim­ing for the men’s trap com­pe­ti­tion will be An­tho­ny Mara­jand Robert Auer­bach from 11 am.

Rheeza Grant and Ma­li­ka David­son were a frus­trat­ing pair af­ter los­ing out to El Sal­vador for 13th spot in the women's beach vol­ley­ball com­pe­ti­tion.

The na­tion­al duo had to set­tle for 14th spot af­ter be­ing swept in straight sets, 2-0, at the Beach Vol­ley­ball Sta­di­um in San Miguel.

Play in the first set was bal­anced ear­ly on with T&T stay­ing with the El Sal­vado­ri­ans, 3-3, but their op­po­nent went on a run and had sev­en unan­swered points to hold a 10-3 lead at the break.

How­ev­er, the lo­cal pair did not stay down for long and ral­lied back to tie the score at 20-20. The El Sal­vador team kept clam and worked off the two points to the dis­may of Grant and David­son and took the set, 22-20.

“It was a game that we could have done bet­ter be­cause the team wasn’t at a high­er lev­el than us. We made a lit­tle too many er­rors,” said David­son. “But in the first set, we got back on it with our com­plex­i­ty which is our serv­ing which I felt that we had way more con­fi­dence in and we were play­ing a much bet­ter game there. The team had some good plays they caught us off guard with it at times or two.

“They had a game-plan for us and I felt for us to break their game plan, we had to change some things which we did and we caused them to make er­rors and forced them how we want­ed them to play.”

The sec­ond set be­gan sim­i­lar­ly with the T&T vol­ley­ballers match­ing the El Sal­vado­ri­ans point for point with scores tied 5-5 but the El Sal­vador team re­gained their com­po­sure and added six more points com­pared to T&T’s one to earn an 11-6 lead be­foe claim­ing the set, 21-14.

“They beat us on the ex­pe­ri­ence that they have. We can’t dis­cred­it the team re­gard­less of both of us be­ing on the same lev­el. They had a lot more game ex­pe­ri­ence than us. We re­al­ly re­al­ly want­ed that vic­to­ry to­day to gain two wins at least from the five games we played but we tried our hard­est but it just wasn’t our best to­day,” said Grant.

The Nic­ho­lette Pan­tor-cap­tained rug­by women’s team end­ed in the last place in the eight-team com­pe­ti­tion which end­ed on Sun­day.

T&T, coached by Carl­ton Fe­lix, was hop­ing to cap­ture its first win in their sev­enth play­off match but were beat­en 22-0 by Mex­i­co.

“In the Mex­i­co game we played hard with good in­ten­si­ty, but un­for­tu­nate­ly we didn't keep our com­po­sure and kept los­ing pos­ses­sion,” said Fe­lix af­ter the lo­cal team’s fi­nal match at the Games.

The rug­by unit had ear­li­er lost to host coun­try Pe­ru, 31-10, in the fifth to eighth place­ment play­off. Leah Kin­ti­ba scored both tries to get T&T's points.

He said, “Over­all it was a great ex­pe­ri­ence for the team as most of them have nev­er played at this lev­el be­fore. It's an eye-open­er in terms of the work we have to do to catch up with oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al teams es­pe­cial­ly phys­i­cal­ly.

“All in all the ex­pe­ri­ence was good and hope­ful­ly the play­ers will re­main mo­ti­vat­ed to work hard to pre­pare their bod­ies and minds right be­cause al­though these teams are bet­ter than us, they're still with­in our reach.

At the Al­bufero Medio Mun­do, Nicholas Robin­son was able to achieve one of his goals at the Games in break­ing the na­tion­al men’s 200m kayak sin­gles record.

Com­pet­ing in Sun­day's semi­fi­nals, he clocked 40.613 sec­onds in plac­ing sev­enth and was elim­i­nat­ed.

How­ev­er, it was an im­prove­ment from the first round when he crossed in 41.328 to place sixth in heat one.

At the Miguel Grau Col­i­se­um, a win on Mon­day for Michael Alexan­der and Aaron Prince in their re­spec­tive qual­i­fy­ing match­es will en­sure two medals for T&T. What type of met­al it will be, will re­ly on the lo­cal box­ers.

Alexan­der will have to take out Cos­ta Ri­ca's Ed­uar­do Sanchez in the men's light wel­ter­weight (64 kg) quar­ter­fi­nals when the box­ers meet in the sev­enth bout in the af­ter­noon ses­sion which starts at 3 pm on Mon­day (T&T time) where Nicaraguan Les­ther Es­pino stands in the way of Prince in the men's mid­dleweight (75kg) quar­ter­fi­nals. They will square off in the fifth fight in the Mon­day evening ses­sion at 8.30 pm.

Al­so com­pet­ing on Mon­day is T&T’s Megan Lawrence ver­sus Glo­ria Mos­quera (Colom­bia) in the women's 67kg Taek­won­do (ky­oru­gi) at 12.15 pm

In bad­minton, Nikiesha Blake in the women's sin­gles round of 64.

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