Pre-tournament favourites Everest Hikers dominated their first match of the Noble House sponsored Goals Galore Indoor six-a-side hockey tournament on the opening night Monday at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
They brushed aside the young Shakatan team comprising a national under-21 selection by a score of 16-7 in the Guyana Hockey Board’s Annual handicap tournament.
Despite Shakatan’s four-goal handicap at the beginning of the match, the Hikers made up the deficit in short time while tallying 14 goals.
National striker Robert France led the scoring with five goals with assistance from Randy Hope with four and a double from the pugnacious Jerry Bell.
Singles for Everest came from Devin Munroe, Brian Asregado and Alex Gouveia while Shakatan’s lone scorer was Eric Hing.
Old Fort ‘A’ were the other victors in the tough ‘A’ class competition after they soundly beat Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) 12-7.
Jason Dos Santos was on fire and led all scorers with a hat-trick while Aderemi Simon slotted in a double and Dwight Sullivan and John Abrahams registering one each.
The Bourda side, who needed to make up a one-goal handicap at the start, managed only three goals from Chris Xavier, Orlando Semple and Philip Fernandes.
In the ‘B’ category which featured both men and women’s teams competing against each other for the first time, Everest Ladies’ earned bragging rights over their male club mates by registering a 11 – 5 victory in a match that started with score at 4-4.
Former national Captain LaToya Fordyce opened the scoring for the ladies just two minutes into the game but it was national striker Avonda James who showed no mercy for the Everest juniors by chalking up five goals while Cora Towler added one more for good measure.
The lone goal for Everest ‘B’ was scored by Quillon Williams.
Despite enjoying a 4-3 handicap at the beginning of the match, the female GCC Tigers went down by 6-5 to Old Fort ‘B’.
Dwayne Allen, Tony Cole and Teon Joaquin scored one each for Old Fort while the GCC lone reply came off the stick of Tricia Fiedtkou.
The young ladies of GCC, the Spartans managed to hold of the veteran Carib Degenerates to a 10-10 finish after the Degenerates were faced with having to make up a five-goal deficit at the start.
Timothy Jonas scored a hat-trick for the Degenerates while Sheldon Corlette and Gregory Sills added two goals each and Ivor Thompson and Rawl Davson one apiece.
Marzena Fiedtkou scored a double for the Spartans while Dominique DeGroot and Gabriella Xavier added one each.
The tournament continued last evening while other matches will be played on Friday at the same venue.
