By Paul-Andre Walker, Staff ReporterJAMAICA'S WATER polo coach Lazlo Borbeley, while thrilled at his teams' domination of the pool on the opening night of the Caribbean Islands Swimming Championships (CISC), was cautious in his predictions about what those victories meant for the rest of the tournament.
"It's a good start yes but it doesn't mean too much right now because the competition has just started," said a careful Borbeley.
Both Borbeley's male and female teams, impressed on Thursday night with the men defeating Caribbean kingpins Puerto Rico 9-5, while the women destroyed arch rivals Trinidad and Tobago 12-6 at the National Stadium pool.
Jamaica's captain Lance Rochester was instrumental in bringing about the demise of the defending champions with a timely hat-trick, while his teammate Jamie Smith had the most goals on the night, racking up four strikes. Nicholas Vaughan and Sean Campbell also chipped in with a goal each.
In a losing effort, Puerto Rico's most experienced player, 19-year-old Frederick Irizarry, kept the game interesting with four goals of his own.
Puerto Rican coach, Daniel Martir, unlike the mass of Jamaican supporters, was not very surprised by his team's defeat and told The Gleaner his reasons for thinking so.
"I have a young team that is in a development period. The average age of my team is 16.7 years and they are playing against players that are already 20," he said. When prompted about what went wrong during the game, Matir was critical of his team's errors.
BAD PASSES
"There was a lack of good passing. In parts we controlled the game but our bad passes allowed counter-attacks that the Jamaicans did very well in making use of them," he said.
Jamaica started impressively, going up 2-1 in the first quarter against a Puerto Rican team that was not as physically conditioned like them. There were a few scary moments after that as the Puerto Ricans kept the game close with the half ending at 4-3.
However, the Jamaicans pounced on a number of numerical advantages stemming from Puerto Rican ejections to outscore them in the fourth quarter to go up 7-4.
The game was all over by the time the fourth quarter came around, where the Jamaicans still pressed home their advantage to outscore the defending champions by two goals to one.
Borbeley attributed his team's victory to their level of fitness and concentration.
"We were fitter, we made less errors and took our opportunities well," he said.
In the other game played on the day, Trinidad and Tobago thrashed Caribbean neighbours Barbados 11-4.
Jamaica will play Barbados in the male category at 8:45 p.m., while the women will have their return game against Trinidad at 10:00 p.m. later today. Tomorrow the men will play their return-leg game against Trinidad and Tobago at 12:45 p.m., while the women will play Puerto Rico at 11:30 a.m.
