The Saint Lucia Rugby Football Union (SLRFU) has formally announced a 32-strong national delegation set to compete in the 2026 Rugby Americas North (RAN) Regional Sevens Qualifiers, scheduled to unfold November 28–29 at Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago’s Hasely Crawford Stadium. The Caribbean island nation will field full rosters in both the men’s and women’s divisions of the regional elite competition.
The upcoming RAN Sevens caps off an intensive stretch of international fixtures for Saint Lucia’s rugby development pipeline, which has seen the squads travel for competitive matches across neighboring territories including St Vincent and the Grenadines, Martinique, and Guadeloupe in the months leading up to the qualifiers. Both the men’s and women’s teams enter the Trinidad-hosted tournament with clearly defined, high-stakes competitive objectives mapped out by coaching staff and union leadership.
For the Saint Lucia women’s sevens program, the 2026 tournament marks their most promising shot at a top regional finish at this level in seven years. The competition’s landscape is uniquely favorable this cycle, as defending RAN Sevens champions Mexico and powerhouse continental side Canada are both absent, having opted to compete in the HSBC SVNS circuit event in Dubai instead. This leaves a six-team round-robin women’s bracket featuring Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and host nation Trinidad and Tobago, with a single coveted qualifying spot for the 2027 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru on the line. The Saint Lucia women’s side carries a long track record of podium success at regional sevens events: they claimed silver at the 2009 NACRA Championships in Mexico City, finishing runners-up to Guyana, and secured a bronze medal at the 2019 RAN tournament held in George Town, Cayman Islands.
The 13-member women’s playing roster is anchored by a core of seasoned regional campaigners, including Renetta Reynolds, Mary Roberts, Shantel George, and decorated multi-sport athlete Makeba Alcide. Rising talent Annela Phillips, a product of the SLRFU Youth Academy, earns her first call-up to the senior national sevens side after gaining valuable high-level match time in October playing for Trinidad’s Royalians domestic club. The women’s squad will be led on the sidelines by head coach Wedrel St Clair, supported by team manager Janelle Cools and physiotherapist Zhenya Allain.
The men’s national sevens team, by contrast, enters the tournament with a clear promotion mandate. Drawn into the Men’s Tier 2 group alongside The Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Curaçao, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Saint Lucia must top the entire six-team bracket to earn long-awaited promotion back to the RAN Sevens elite Tier 1 division. Their 2025 campaign at the Larry Gomes Stadium in Malabar, Arima, saw them finish fourth in Tier 2: they secured decisive wins over Turks and Caicos (12-0) and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (31-12), before being shut out by eventual 2025 tournament winners Curaçao (19-0) and falling to The Bahamas 26-17 in the third-place playoff fixture.
To reverse last year’s underwhelming result, men’s head coach Chantel John has assembled a balanced squad blending overseas-based veteran talent and homegrown youth academy prospects. Canada-based forward duo Melvin Alexis and Claudius Medouze will return to Saint Lucia’s lineup to shore up the team’s physical contact and breakdown play, complemented by a cohort of emerging domestic talents including Malyle Chery, Yantez Jn Baptiste, Jesey Francois, and Benerrero Wellington, all graduates of the SLRFU local development pathway.
SLRFU Technical Director Wayne Pantor emphasized that the team’s recent string of regional international fixtures served as the primary data point to inform final roster selections: “Both squads have been putting the final polishing touches on their game plans to ensure they are competitively primed to reach the tournament podium. We have spent months refining our systems to apply the hard-earned lessons from our long-term development program and every recent international engagement. It is critical that every player stays disciplined, locked in, and fully aligned with our team’s structured style of play. They need to trust the process, execute their individual roles to the highest standard, and fully buy into the collective vision we are building for the future of Saint Lucian rugby.”
Backed by targeted corporate sponsorship, as well as formal technical and logistical support from the Saint Lucia Olympic Committee and the island’s Ministry of Sports, the national delegation is now laser-focused on delivering sharp, disciplined tactical performances on the Trinidad pitch. Operating under the SLRFU’s official organizational motto “Rugby in Paradise: Developing Rugby, Building Champions”, the team nicknamed Helen’s Ruggers is heading south with a unified rallying cry: “Yon Èkip. Yon Zil. Yon Rèv. One Team. One Island. One Dream.”