Nigel Si­mon

Cap­tain Krys­telle Es­delle had a match-high 15 points, in­clud­ing 11 kills, as T&T se­nior women vol­ley­ballers be­gan the de­fence of their Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Cham­pi­onship crown with a straight sets win over US Vir­gin Is­lands. This was at the An­tho­ny Nesty Sports Com­plex in Para­mari­bo, Suri­name on Sun­day night. Play­ing in the penul­ti­mate match of the open­ing day of the 13th edi­tion of the tour­na­ment, the "Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers" coast­ed to a 25-10, 25-15, 25-16 vic­to­ry as they sound­ed a warn­ing to their chal­lengers.

T&T, com­ing off a fourth placd fin­ish at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in Mayaguez, Puer­to Ri­co last month, al­so got sol­id con­tri­bu­tions from Sinead Jack with 13 points, which in­clud­ed four blocks; Puer­to Ri­co-based pro­fes­sion­al, Kel­ly-Anne Billingy, the 2008 tour­na­ment "Most Valu­able Play­er" with 11 and Chan­non Thomp­son with ten. For USVI, Janelle Sa­rauw had eight points and Elisa Sanchez, sev­en. The Fran­cis­co "Panchee" Cruz-coached T&T women team, who is favourite to cap­ture a third straight ti­tle and fourth over­all, hav­ing won pre­vi­ous­ly in 1996, 2006 and 2008, had a rest day yes­ter­day and will al­so be off to­day be­fore meet­ing Ba­hamas at 6 pm to­mor­row. The lo­cal unit will end its group play against main ri­val Bar­ba­dos on Thurs­day from noon.

In Sun­day's last match, host Suri­name held off Do­mini­ca 25-20, 25-22, 25-14 led by More­na Leter with 16 points, San­d­ri­na Hun­sel with 11 and Jan­ice Va­lies, nine in the oth­er group. An­na-Maria Xavier was Do­mini­ca top­scor­er with six points, while Keysha Davis, Eliz­a­beth Joseph and Lor­raine Lochart each con­tributed four points each. Ja­maica and Nether­lands An­tilles are al­so in the oth­er group.

Men stop N/An­tilles

Ear­li­er in the day, T&T men's vol­ley­ball squad, com­ing off a sixth placed fin­ish at the CAC Games, al­so got their cam­paign off and run­ning with a come-from-be­hind vic­to­ry over Nether­land An­tilles in four sets. The Nolan Tash skip­pered squad be­gan ner­vous­ly los­ing the first set 26-28, but re­cov­ered to take the next three sets, 25-19, 25-15, 25-19 for vic­to­ry in one hour and 54 min­utes. Ger­many-based, Marc-An­tho­ny Hon­ore led T&T with 20 points, while Tash added 17, Sean Mor­ri­son 15, Kevin Nim­rod, nine and Chris­t­ian Fran­cois, eight. Gilbert Pauli­na had 15 for the losers.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, T&T coach Gideon Dick­son said, "We start­ed slow in the first set. When we were be­hind 14-19, our team be­gan to dig deep­er if they had to win the game. Over the years Nether­lands An­tilles have shown they are a good op­po­nent and we re­spect­ed their courage to play against us." Tash be­lieves the first match of the tour­na­ment is al­ways a dif­fi­cult one to play, but at the same time he was pleased that his team over­came the strug­gle. "The many un­forced er­rors that we made in the first set was the rea­son why we lost that set but when we got our rhythm in the game we went on play­ing for every sin­gle point," said Tash. To­day, the lo­cal team, third placed fin­ish­ers in 2008, will meet Guade­loupe in their sec­ond match from 10 am to­day be­fore clos­ing out against bit­ter ri­vals Bar­ba­dos to­mor­row from 6 pm.

The Bar­ba­di­ans, ten-time cham­pi­ons, al­so came from be­hind to beat Guade­loupe in a dif­fi­cult match 21-25, 25-17, 21-25, 25-15, 15-12.

Bar­ba­di­an cap­tain El­wyn Ox­ley led five play­ers in dou­ble-dig­its with 15 points while Fabi­an Cox got 14, Akeem Payne 13, Damien Danzell 12, and Rom­mel Agard, 11. For Guade­loupe, Er­ic Mon­dogue had a match-high 22 points and Jean-Pierre Ar­bau, 15. Coach Ludger Niles of Bar­ba­dos shared that his team is very young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced, but did pret­ty well dur­ing the match against Guade­loupe. "We want to en­sure that we im­prove and al­though we were be­hind dur­ing the game we came back to win.

This was a wake­up call for us to play bet­ter in the games ahead."

Ox­ley stat­ed that it was a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make the points. "The way we play is not what I ex­pect­ed, but our team has a tremen­dous abil­i­ty to come from be­hind and win games. We have a good unit to do well dur­ing the tour­na­ment." Ja­maica, Ba­hamas and Suri­name com­prise the oth­er group as they com­pete for the ti­tle left va­cant by last year's win­ner, Mar­tinique.

To­day's match­es

Men:

T&T vs Guade­loupe, 10 am

Bar­ba­dos vs Nether­lands An­tilles, noon

Suri­name vs Ba­hamas, 8 pm.

Women:

Bar­ba­dos vs USVI, 2 pm

Ja­maica vs Nether­lands An­tilles, 6 pm