AS Jamaica look to start the defence of their Caribbean Football Union Under-14 Boys’ Challenge Series title in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, Head Coach Vassell Reynolds says the aim is to strike a balance between winning and development.

The Jamaicans have been drawn in Tier 1 Group C and are to open their account at 9:30 am on Monday against St Kitts & Nevis. They are also slated to play against Aruba and Curacao in the first round.

Reynolds described the team as “decent”, saying the technical staff had done its best to scout the entire island from four months ago to get the best talent.

He said the recruitment started in May when they had open sessions in each region and selected 150 players. From there they whittled the number down to 40 before selecting the best 18 players for the assignment.

“We are the defending champions and we want to win,” he told the Jamaica Observer. “However, the main goal behind these events is really development and to get the players through the various age groups up to Under-17 and Under-20, it is not all about winning.”

He said while he hoped they had more time to prepare, he felt the team improved as the training sessions went along, culminating in the week-long camp leading up to this weekend.

“They are competent, we have seen the improvement and that is what we are looking for,” he said.

Reynolds expressed concerned about the travel schedule that will see the team getting to their hotel very early on Sunday morning before their first game on Monday.

He said he did not like the playing times for the games. Their first competitive outing Monday morning is to be followed by the second game set to start at 10:00 am on Tuesday and the other scheduled to behin at 1:30 pm on Wednesday.

However, he noted: “We played practice games at those times, to get the players acclimatised to playing at that time and on Friday, we trained at 1:30 pm for the same reason as we wanted to replicate the starting times.”