Bermuda coach Gary Adams has urged his players to rise to the challenge as they head into battle against some of the top teams in the region in the final round of the Concacaf Women’s Under-17 Qualifiers in Mexico today.

The Lady Gombey Warriors start their campaign against the host nation at 6pm Bermuda time before taking on Haiti on Wednesday and completing their campaign against Costa Rica on Saturday.

“No disrespect to Costa Rica, but we’re playing two of the powerhouses in the region in Mexico and Haiti,’’ Adams told The Royal Gazette.

“It’s an exciting challenge and if we want to get better, this is what we need to prepare for. I’m under no illusions about the difficulty of the task, but we have to embrace the challenge and everybody is looking forward to it.”

“We’ll be optimistic but we also have to be practical. We would obviously love to win the group, but let’s not be naive about the fact that we’re playing Mexico.

“Regardless of that, we should be looking to secure second or third spot in the group. Nobody wants to finish bottom of the group, and I think we have enough talent to get something out of most games if we stay together and stick to the game plan.”

Drawing inspiration from the way the senior men’s team played against higher-ranked Honduras in the two-leg Gold Cup preliminary round matches last week, Adams revealed that the under-17 girls are looking to employ similar strategies.

“Just like the senior men, we might have to be a little bit more defensive and be realistic, at the same time respecting the opponent,” Adams said.

“But there’s no reason why we can’t score and get a result. We’ll look to use the same playbook, but a good position of second or third in the group would be a success.

“Coming second puts us in a position to actually qualify for the World Cup. Now is that a big task? For sure it is, but that’s the end goal.

“We have to believe and stay together, football is a funny game, you never know what can happen on the day.”

After securing one of the best runners-up spots in the first stage of the qualifiers at the beginning of February, Adams has faced some difficulties in keeping the squad together.

Players such as captain Jayla Peets-Butterfield, who is studying overseas, met up with the rest of the team in Mexico only on Saturday, with Adams getting the entire squad training together in the final session on Sunday, just 24 hours before their opening match.

“We were training with only a third of the team for the first couple of weeks,” Adams said.

“Some of the players went back to school abroad, while some were part of the under-20 tournament in Trinidad. But for the last month, we’ve had the majority of the team together, which allowed us to go over a couple of things.

“Realistically, we had about 3½ weeks with the majority of the girls training together. My understanding is that everybody is in good health and they have been training five times a week, so they got time to rest before the trip.

“Altitude is going to play a massive part in this tournament, so we need to make sure that we can manage that. Hopefully, we don’t get any serious side effects because we’re playing at 9,000 feet above sea level.”