Barbados Hockey Federation's Strong Showing at 2025 Junior Pan American Challenge

A resounding success.

That’s how the Barbados Hockey Federationhas described their recent participation in the 2025 Junior Pan American Challenge at the Astro Turf in Wildey, St Michael.

When the tournament came to an end, the boy’s team ended in fourth, an improvement from their seventh in 2023, while the girls finished fifth and conceded far less goals than they did in 2023.

Speaking on the team’s performance, was Barbados Hockey Federation president Kofi Hinds, who admitted that while they are in a rebuilding phase – as far as the junior girls are concerned – improvements had been registered.

“We are proud of results of both teams. We really do think that there has been an improvement from 2023 to this year. We are particularly proud of how the Under-21 Girls’ performed and they were consistent throughout the tournament. And again, they did far better than they did in 2023, and I think that bodes well for the future of the programme” he told Saturday Sport.

“With regard to the boys, they gave a very good account of themselves.

Narrowly losing the bronze medal isn’t a great experience in any context. But, it was good performance and they delivered. So, I still think it’s an improvement from what the team did in 2023,” he said.

The president also said that the Federation received high praise from major governing bodies.

“We received high marks from the Pan American Hockey Federation (PAHF), as well as from the FIHappointed Tournament Director (TD) Adrian Della, who was here from Argentina. The TD (officially called the Technical Delegate), is responsible for the tournament and is required to submit a report to the International Hockey Federation (FIH), which essentially ‘grades’ the running of the tournament itself, but also provides a critical review of the host country in ten categories. I’m happy to report that Barbados received a rating of ‘excellent’ in almost all areas. This bodes well for Barbados’ ability to be able to host future international hockey tournaments, or being assigned international

hockey tournaments in the future. We received similarly high grades when we hosted in 2023, so to be able to maintain the standard of excellence was rewarding in itself.”

He also handed out plaudits to the officials for their competent officiating. “Our four international officials also performed well, with three of them receiving exceptional grades – Shane Lewis (umpire), Nicole Dawson (technical official), and Justin Taitt (technical official). Whitney Doyle umpired in her first ever international tournament and performed admirably, earning a good grade, and receiving very positive feedback from both umpires’ managers, Suzie Sutton from the United States and Diego Barbas from Argentina.”

“We also successfully piloted the ‘International Tournament NTO Exposure Programme’, which provided the opportunity for our local technical officials (NTOs) and promising local umpires to participate in an international tournament and experience what it would be like to be an international technical official or umpire by actively participating in the work at that level. It allowed them to gain invaluable experience to help them progress to the next level and improve standards at home.

The successful programme was the brain-child of Justin Taitt, one of our international technical officials, and was the first of its kind for PAHF.

So all in all, we had a really good tournament.”

With that completed, the BHF can now look forward to the season set to start today, which had to be postponed due to the hosting of the tournament.

This weekend will see Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) playing Avengers in men’s category today at 2:30 p.m. which will be followed by a women’s game between UWI Blackbirds and Legends. (SW)