Cuban-born Fran­cis­co "Panchee" Cruz and T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion vice-pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son, both FIVB Lev­el Three cer­ti­fied, have been re­tained as coach­es of the se­nior na­tion­al vol­ley­ball teams.

The con­fir­ma­tion of their two-year con­tracts and that of the five oth­er na­tion­al head coach­es was made by the new­ly in­stalled T&TVF ex­ec­u­tive, led by pres­i­dent Daymi­an Stew­art.

Cruz has been at the helm of the women's team for the past years dur­ing which time he has led the squad to five con­sec­u­tive Caribbean Cham­pi­onship crowns, no few­er than five ap­pear­ances at the Pan Amer­i­can Women's Cup, the qual­i­fiers for the Lon­don Olympic Games last June and in­to the sec­ond round of the FIVB World Cham­pi­onship Qual­i­fiers for 2014 to be held in T&T from May 23 to 27.

Dick­son, a po­lice of­fi­cer, has been the on­ly coach to lead the na­tion­al men's team to a Caribbean crown two years ago in Suri­name while they were run­ner-up to Ba­hamas last year. The se­nior men's squad has al­so com­pet­ed at a num­ber of Pan Amer­i­can Cup tour­na­ments un­der Dick­son as well as the qual­i­fiers for the Lon­don Olympic Games which were held in Los An­ge­les, last May.

The oth­er coach­es ap­point­ed in­clude for­mer na­tion­al women's coach Mac­sood Ali (FIVB Lev­el 2), as Ju­nior and Youth Girls coach; se­nior men's as­sist coach, David Ca­ma­cho (FIVB Lev­el 2) as a first time Ju­nior men's coach, na­tion­al men's play­er Sean Mor­ri­son (FIVB Lev­el 2), as Youth men's coach and David Thomas (men) and Ja­son Den­nis (women) as na­tion­al beach vol­ley­ball coach­es.

Fol­low­ing the ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing Stew­art and his ex­e­cut­ed out­lined some ob­jec­tives for the ap­point­ed coach­es.

In ad­di­tion, Stew­art and his ex­ec­u­tive said they al­so ex­pect to see im­prove­ments in the world rank­ing and con­ti­nen­tal re­sults of all teams.

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