Quick acclimatisation top on Uruguay’s list

– Head Coach not taking any team for granted

By Akeem Greene

Uruguay women are the first team arrived in Guyana for the Pan American Indoor Hockey Championships and have already set their sights on a maiden title when the action gets cracking on Monday October 16.
The team got their first sessions on Wednesday evening at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH) – the venue for the event- and Head Coach Nicolas Tixe explained that they will be focusing on getting acclimatised as quickly as possible.
“In Uruguay we are getting out from winter so we are not used to so much hot as there is here. I think we won’t have problem with it. We will acclimatise ourselves quickly. We will have to see how the temperatures goes when there is a lot of

Practising tactical drills was the focus of the team on Wednesday evening

people inside the venue when we are playing,” Tixe told Guyana Times Sport.
The temperature is not the only adapting facet to meet the Spanish speaking unit, since the surface is not what they have become accustomed to playing on.
“For us it is a new surface, we have just finished our first training, it was very good, it moved quickly which contributed to good flow. We have a few days to get used to the surface.”
There will be seven other nations contesting the Women’s competition, namely Guyana, Canada, Argentina, Barbados, Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago and the USA. Among them all, the Uruguay unit is hoping to walk away with top honours and make a return to the Indoor Hockey World Cup which will be held February 2018, in Berlin, Germany.
“All the teams come here with the expectation of trying to win the tournament and qualify for the world cup. It will be a hard tournament because they are very good teams, such as Canada, USA, Argentina and they are new ones like Guyana and Barbados that we don’t know much about but we expected a good battle,” said the coach 2010 runners-up (lost to Argentina).
Argentina and Canada both have enjoyed the winner’s podium twice, while Trinidad won the inaugural Women’s Indoor Pan American Cup back in 2002.
The coach explained the squad composes an excellent mixture of experienced and young players, with players including Co-captain Rossana Paselle expected to be the lethal weapon having competed in two Pan-American and one World Cup.