Bermuda’s senior netballers gave coach Anthony Mouchette the perfect birthday gift at the weekend: a maiden win at the Americas Federation of Netball Association’s (AFNA) Championships in Trinidad.Mouchette’s team hammered Guyana 68-34 in their final group match at the Jean Pierre Complex in Port-of-Spain to end the regional tournament on a winning note.After the match the Bermuda players celebrated the uplifting result by dunking a cooler of ice on coach Mouchette.Despite boasting a dismal 1-7 record during the tournament, Bermuda Netball Association president Tracey Sharrieff reckoned the experience will have benefited the players.“Not only have the girls gained much experience playing against world class netballers, but utilised the tournament to build on what needs to be done at our domestic level tobring us to a satisfactory level for future international competition,” she said.During the nine-team tournament Bermuda suffered crushing defeats by regional powerhouses Barbados, (102-13), Jamaica (94-15) and hosts Trinidad (95-18) but fared much better in further losses to Canada (49-31), Grenada (60-45), USA (64-28) and St Lucia (68-26).Sharrieff said much work has to be done in order for Bermuda’s senior netballers to become a reckoning force within the region.“In acknowledging the disparity between netball giants Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad in comparison to the rest of the region, we can now recognise which teams we are capable of competing against after some more work,” she added.This year marked the first time Bermuda’s senior team has competed at the AFNA Championships in several years.