PHILIPSBURG–St. Kitts made a strong case to qualify for the U21 World Youth Netball Championship with a comprehensive 45 to 25 win over St. Maarten in the U21 World Youth Netball Qualifiers of the Americas Federation of Netball Association (AFNA) at the L.B. Scott Sports Auditorium, last night.
Of interest is that rain stopped play with 4:19 left on the clock. A brief shower of rain caused water to blow through the windows and doors at the eastern end of the auditorium. The referees were forced to stop the match because the wet floor became too dangerous for the players to run and jump up and down the court.
St. Kitts Goal Shooter Alia Gibson out-jumped and out-shot her opponent to lead her team to the first win of the tournament. She finished with 35 out of 54 attempts. The other contributors to the significant win were Goal Attack Laquanda Connor with six out of eight and Goal Shooter Aaliyah Gibson with four out of four attempts.
St. Kitts started off the match very fluently in attack with creative rotations and ball distributions and went ahead with a 6-0 lead. Every goal scored in that period was greeted with rapturous applause and screams that seemingly took away the home court advantage from the girls from the Friendly Island.
St. Maarten’s Goal Shooter Jamaiah Newton gave them its first goal after three minutes of play. St. Maarten then went on a 5-1 run which resulted mainly from swift movement off the ball which opened a lot of cracks in the defence of the opposition. But the visitors lifted their intensity and by the end of the first quarter, the score read 12-5 in favour of St. Kitts.
For the rest of the match, the Sugar Girls found a way to get the ball to Gibson whose superior prowess in the air was never controlled by the home team. She won all the balls lobbed in her area and had second attempts every time she missed her first shot. The coaches decided to insert Sasha Guy Campbell as a marker for Gibson and though Campbell manhandled her on the floor, Gibson’s superior height and jumping abilities were enough to give her regular goals.
For St. Maarten, Odesa Mc Bean led the team with 15 out of 22 attempts. Newton finished with six out of seven attempts; a big contrast in her attempts from the first match, in the first match against Argentina, she had 15 attempts. Kayla Robinson hit four out of nine attempts.