Coach Perkins: I have a lot of talented players…
HOLY Name Convent’s football teams, last week, were crowned the U20 and U15 North Zone Division champions. The U15 team clinched the title,on Friday afternoon, after beating Diego Martin Central in a reschedule fixture. This is the third year in a row the school has won the U15 Division. The U20 team won the North Zone title, on Thursday.
Speaking with Newsday, head coach of the teams Gordon Perkins said, “So far we’re going quite well. We won in U20, we won the North Zone. We won the U15 there on Friday. We’ve played unbeaten to date. We’ve won all of our fixtures. We have have a big game coming up in the Girl’s Big 5, the Under 20 Big 5 competition on November 3. We play Signal Hill here in Trinidad.”
Regarding his teams’ performance between 2018 and into the 2019 season, Perkins said, “I’ll need to go back one year more. I’ve been at Holy Name... this is the third year. And I came to them in 2017 with a three-year programme. In 2017, we were playing in the division below, in the senior division. In that year, we won everything again, in U20, winning the national senior division title. That kind of gave us some momentum. In 2018, we performed creditably I would say. We came second in the league to Bishops and we were the finalists in the Intercol knockout, losing to Tranquility. This year is a final year for some of the girls so they want to leave on a bang.”
Asked if his teams exceeded his expectations, Perkins said he expected a good showing this season.
“Well actually, I consider myself to be blessed because I have a lot of talented players. My main challenge was to get them to play to their full potential. And this year, this was the closest that we are to achieving there, because I got a lot of good players here.”
Were any players on the squad important in terms of keeping the team together?
“That would be a tough call with the Under 20s because it’s a straight unit. I have players in many, many areas. The stand out players I would say are my two stoppers, Jade Superville and Mya Ramdoo, they play very, very well together. The skipper of the team is Havana Ramdeen. She is a prolific scorer and a very, very good leader on the field. Then I have an Under 15 player, who plays alongside Ramdeen, Analeisse Arneaud. She is a prolific scorer as well, a fantastic player and is the skipper of the Under 15 team. She plays for the Under 20s because she’s still eligible age-wise to play U15.”
Holy Name will face off against fellow unbeaten side Signal Hill Secondary in the Big 5 semifinal at St Mary’s College grounds in Port-of-Spain on November 3 at 3 pm.