As the Guyana Hockey Board/Lucozade Indoor Hockey Tournament continued on Friday at the National Gymnasium, five evenly poised matches thrilled one of the largest turnouts to date.
Action during the GHB/Lucozade Indoor Hockey Tournament (file photo)
In the opening match of the night, the Pit bulls team managed to hand the Saints team a 4:1 defeat thanks to the Sargeant pair.
The first half of play demonstrated the intensity of both teams to show they were not going to be walk overs in the competition, having played without a goal scored in the first half.
However, the second half say the Saints team feel the pressure of a long game losing focus even though they opened the scoring in the 23rd minute as Hilton Chester pushed on past Michael Hing.
After which it became the Sargeant show. Meshach Sargeant stroked a perfect shot to net the first goal for Pitbulls, leveling the score in the 25th minute.
Mark Sargeant then took over proceedings to score a hat trick of goals in minutes 31, 36 and 40 to leave hand Pitbulls a 4:1 victory by the end of the match.
The ladies then showed their skills in the second match where Old Fort contested against Hikers. Like the first game, the first half showed the quality of both sides with only Hikers’ captain Kenisha Wills being able to register a goal. But the second half saw Annalisa Singh on return scoring in the 31st minute and Latacia Chung marking her first two minutes before play stopped to close the match at 3:0 in favour of Hikers.
In the highly anticipated clash between Vintage and Old Fort Knockers, the outcome did not disappoint as Vintage handed Knockers an 8:1 drubbing.
Eric Hing pounce on a relaxed Knockers’ defence to score in the first minute of play only to have Knockers’ Dehron Wilkinson reply with the equalizer in one minute later.
Hing returned to score his second in the sixth minute while Devin Hooper score Vintage’s third goal in minute seven.
Philip Fernandes took advantage of a Knockers defence that seemed to be out of place as he scored a double in minutes 12 and 15 respectively to put the vintage team comfortably ahead at the end of the first half with the score 5:1. Dwayne Scott then capitalized and scored a double of his own in minutes 26 and 33 before Fernandes scored his third and the final goal for the night to leave the Knockers suffering at 8:1.
Spartans and Pizza Hut GCC battled feverishly only to result in a draw and arguably one of the best contests of the tournament.
Tricia Fiedtkou opened the scoring for GCC with a superb field goal just three minutes into the game but Shebiki quickly responded with a goal for Spartans and allowed Marzana Fiedtkou to put Spartans in the lead by half time.
Spartans resumed the second half on the same pace with Dominique de Groot scoring a penalty goal in the 29th minute giving Spartans a 3:1 lead.
However, things quickly went in the favour of the GCC ladies as Dacia Woodroffe scored a penalty goal in the 35th minute and Rebecca Xavier squeezed in a field goal two minutes before the end of the match to leave the scores leveled at 3:3.
In the fifth and final game, Hikers’ men scrapped in a close victory over Old Fort Stallions in a 2:1 win.
Jason Chase started off proceedings in the third minute for Stallions while Randy Hope provided the equalizing goal two minutes after. The scores remained leveled heading into the second half.
A good display of defensive playing resulted in Jamari Assarah only being able to capitalize on a penalty to squeeze Hikers in the lead and eventually winning the game 2:1.
