Na­tion­al sailor An­drew Lewis was ex­pect­ed to have the es­teemed ho­n­our of car­ry­ing the na­tion­al flag dur­ing Fri­day evening's open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru.

Lewis, who cre­at­ed his­to­ry ear­li­er this year when he won a bronze medal at the Hempel World Cup Se­ries in Genoa, Italy, the high­est plac­ing for a T&T sailor at a world se­ries event, was joined by his fel­low coun­try­men, all dressed in their tra­di­tion­al red, white and black at­tire.

His se­lec­tion was an­nounced late yes­ter­day and he will be among a proud bunch who will share the mo­ment with ath­letes from the 41 na­tions that are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the mul­ti­sport event.

How­ev­er, ear­li­er it was not so heart­warm­ing for the lo­cal ath­letes who were ac­tive on a chilly day as there were sev­er­al close calls but no suc­cess­es for T&T in their re­spec­tive dis­ci­pline.

Beach vol­ley­ballers Rheeza Grant and Ma­li­ka David­son were with­in reach of get­ting their first win of the Games but let it slip late to go un­der to Cos­ta Ri­ca, 2-0, in their fi­nal Pool B first-round match.

At the beach vol­ley­ball sta­di­um, the T&T duo was con­nect­ing well to be tied 18-18 in the first set but the Cos­ta Ri­cans were able to get the nec­es­sary three points to win the open­er. The next set was just as com­pet­i­tive with T&T lead­ing 20-19 but on re­turn from the break were un­able to add to their score and lost 22-20.

"To­day I felt like we ac­cli­ma­tised so to speak," said Grant. "Our er­rors were a lot less and we ac­tu­al­ly en­joyed the game. We were pret­ty cold in the be­gin­ning but we start­ed to warm up and start­ed to fo­cus and play the game that we know.

"We are hap­py and up­set at the same time. You know when you have the games in your hand and you just let it slip," said Grant with a sigh. "To­day we play US Vir­gin Is­lands and we ex­pect a bet­ter game."

Grant and David­son will hit that sand again to­day com­pete in the 13th - 16th po­si­tions as they placed last in the pool, fol­low­ing loss­es to Co­lum­bia (2-0) and USA (2-0) over the pre­vi­ous two days.

T&T men's beach vol­ley­ball team of Daynte Stew­art and Mar­lon Phillip are in the same po­si­tion as they will com­pete for 13th - 16th po­si­tions af­ter falling to a 2-0 (19-21, 13, 21) de­feat to El Sal­vador yes­ter­day as well.

For rug­by coach Carl­ton Fe­lix, T&T's huge 55-0 loss to the USA will be tak­en as more of a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for the Nico­lette Pan­tor-cap­tained na­tion­al team.

"I think the play­ers per­formed well. We set small goals that we were work­ing on for the game and was able to ac­com­plish most of those. I think they got to re­alise that USA play­ers aren't su­per­hu­man. We are with­in their reach, we just have to con­tin­ue with the work that we are do­ing and we will make the progress that we are look­ing for,

Pan­tor ad­mit­ted her team was ner­vous ini­tial­ly against the tough Amer­i­cans but has full con­fi­dence will im­prove to­day in their match­es.

She said, "We are look­ing to im­prove on re­tain­ing pos­ses­sion of the ball and be­ing more sup­port­ive in at­tack so that we can con­vert these mid­dle line breaks in­to tries and get on the board

The games to­mor­row will be a lot more com­pet­i­tive We have a bet­ter shot at up­set­ting these two teams to­mor­row so we are go­ing pos­i­tive for those two match­es.

Al­so in ac­tion on Sat­ur­day is box­er Nigel Paul against a Columbian op­po­nent.
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