JAMAICA’S Sunshine Girls whipped Barbados 50-29 in the second game of their three-game friendly series at GC Foster College in St Catherine on Saturday, much to the delight of coach Minneth Reynolds.

“I am very pleased with this second consecutive victory, the girls are stepping up and proving themselves quite well. This is what we are training for, even when the tough gets (going), they can withstand the pressure,” Reynolds said.

“When it comes on to selecting the final 12, it is not an easy process, there are numerous things to take into consideration, some days the players show up and some days they don’t, but the girls are really improving and that is a great step going forward,” she added.

The series against their Caribbean neighbours forms part of the Sunshine Girls’ effort to arriving at the final 12 players for the upcoming Commonwealth Games slated for Glasgow, Scotland, from July 23 to August 3.

Conducted under the watchful eyes of Reynolds, and technical director Jill McIntosh, the three games started on Friday and ended yesterday. Both have the difficult job of selecting 12 players from an awesome group of 18.

And in an effort to give every player a fair shot of making the cut, the technical staff has been rotating players, starting each game with a different set of players.

The girls, faced with the pressure of wanting to earn a spot on the team and to beat their less vaunted opponents, got off to a lazy start in Saturday’s game trailing 6-7 at the first quarter interval.

With a change of shooters in the second quarter, the Sunshine Girls picked up the pace as expected and raced to a 19-15 lead at half-time, then progressed to a 33-25 margin at the third interval, and 50-29 at the end.

Goal-shooter for the Sunshine Girls, Shantal Slator, scored 19 from 24 attempts, goal-attack Thristina Harwood netted 19 from 23 attempts, goal-shooter Shanice Beckford made eight from 11 shots, and goal-attack Deneen Taylor scored four from seven attempts.

For Barbados, goal-attack Nikita Pigggot netted 12 from 17 attempts and goal-shooter Laurel Browne scored 11 from 16 attempts