Paragon, Petrotrin top National Indoor Hockey

Petrotrin needed a goal literally at the death to wrest the men’s title from defending champions Queen’s Park Cricket Club (QPCC), while the Paragon women cruised to victory over Ventures to retain the women’s championship.

The men’s final produced surprisingly few goals, given what had transpired on the court 24 hours before.

In Saturday’s semi-finals, QPCC had beaten Notre Dame 5-3, while Petrotrin went one goal better, completing a 6-3 victory over Paragon.

Both teams approached the opening minutes of the final cautiously, before Queen’s Park’s Raphael Govia rammed in a right-side cross to break the deadlock after eight minutes.

For the next ten minutes, the Parkites enjoyed the better of the exchanges, but could not add to their tally- due in part to a combination of poor finishing, and moreso some outstanding goalkeeping by Petrotrin’s Ron Alexander.

Such generosity was punished two minutes before half-time, when an unmarked Wayne Legerton collected a pass at the top of the “D” and sent it whistling into the far corner of the QPCC goal, leaving the teams level at the i nterval.

Dominic Young restored the Queen’s Park lead from a penalty corner, slipping the ball through the legs of the advancing Alexander after his defenders had been drawn out of position.

But the game changed dramatically with the entrance of the energetic Petrotrin forward Solomon Eccles; he forced a penalty for the southerners with nine minutes left, and Eccles himself scored low under the dive of QPCC keeper Reeza Hosein, who had until then also looked unbeatable.

At 2-2, a penalty- stroke shootout seemed on the cards, until Petrotrin won another corner in the final seconds of the 40-minute affair. The clock had run out when Legerton rammed it under the dive of Hosein. Queen’s Park’s reign was over; Petrotrin were the new national indoor champions with the narrow 3-2 victory.

Earlier, Paragon had appeared to barely break a sweat as they rolled over Ventures in the Women’s championship game. Kristin Thompson fired the defending champions ahead in just the second minute, and though Roseanne Reyes scored a well-taken goal for Ventures six minutes later, momentarily raising fans’ hopes of an exciting contest, Keima Gardiener swiftly restored Paragon’s lead.

Another Paragon sortie forced a Ventures defender to block the ball on the goal-line with her hand- the keeper was already beaten- and skipper Alanna Lewis easily dispatched the stroke to give the girls in red a 3-1 half-time lead.

Immediately on the restart, Arielle Cowie intercepted a square pass and scored to bring Ventures back within one, but that would be all. Thirty seconds later, Thompson completed an end-to-end solo run with her second goal, and following a nice exchange of passes, Gardiener got her second item as well.

Avion Ashton completed the scoring in the final minute, giving Paragon a convincing 6-2 victory as they repeated as champions.

Krizia Layne (Courts Malvern) and Ron Alexander (Petrotrin) were named Women’s and Men’s MVPs respectively at the prizegiving ceremony which followed.