Nigel Si­mon

T&T se­nior men's vol­ley­ball squad re­sumed train­ing yes­ter­day in prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can Cup and the Se­nior Caribbean Vol­ley­ball Cham­pi­onship. This af­ter the squad, led by cap­tain Nolan Tash, re­turned home last Sun­day af­ter a sev­enth place fin­ish at the North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Con­fed­er­a­tion (Norce­ca) Men's Con­ti­nen­tal Olympic Qual­i­fiers.

The eight-team tour­na­ment, which qual­i­fied one team (USA) for the Lon­don Olympics, con­clud­ed at the Wal­ter Pyra­mid, Long Beach State Uni­ver­si­ty, Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia on Sat­ur­day night. De­spite its sev­enth place fin­ish af­ter en­ter­ing the tour­na­ment as the sixth seed­ed team, Gideon Dick­son, coach of the 33rd world ranked team, said he was sat­is­fied.

"Our aim at the start of the tour­na­ment was to fin­ish fifth and be very com­pet­i­tive in every match we played and while we had to set­tle for play­ing for sev­enth spot, we no doubt proved that we be­long at this lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion," added Dick­son. Look­ing ahead, Dick­son said his team will now fo­cus on get­ting pre­pared for Pan Amer­i­can Cup from Ju­ly 7 to 15 in Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the Caribbean Vol­ley­ball Cham­pi­onship, Ju­ly 27 to Au­gust 20 in US Vir­gin Is­lands.

At the Caribbean tour­na­ment, T&T will be de­fend­ing the ti­tle it won last year in Suri­name. "We have tar­get­ed get­ting to the World Cham­pi­onship in 2014 as our main goal, but in or­der to con­tin­ue to­wards that goal, the Pan Amer­i­can Cup and Caribbean Cham­pi­onship are im­por­tant tour­na­ments for us as well."

At the Olympic Qual­i­fiers, the T&T quar­tet of Hon­ore, Tash, Ryan Stew­art and libero Ryan Ma­hadeo all fin­ished among the top five per­form­ers in their re­spec­tive po­si­tions. Hon­ore, who was com­ing off an im­pres­sive sea­son in Por­tu­gal with SL Ben­fi­ca where he won the Por­tugese Cup and was run­ner-up in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion was the joint fourth Best Scor­er on 78 points with Tash to trail Puer­to Ri­co's Juan Figueroa (99), Mex­i­co's Car­los Guer­ra (98) and Puer­to Ri­co's Eze­quiel Cruz (80).

Among the Best Spik­ers was the USA's Matt An­der­son with 52 from 89 at­tempts for 61.18 per cent. An­der­son just edged out Hon­ore (60 from 99 - 60.61 per cent) for the top award. Hon­ore, who was a source of in­spi­ra­tion for his team-mates for the du­ra­tion of the tour­na­ment, was al­so pipped for the Best Block­er award by Amer­i­can David Lee.

Lee end­ed with a .88 av­er­age per set just ahead of Hon­ore's .86 per set av­er­age. Stew­art, who led T&T in scor­ing in two match­es, end­ed as the fifth Best Serv­er with a 0.43 av­er­age per set while Ma­hadeo was the third among the Best Libero with a 6.48 av­er­age per set be­hind Puer­to Ri­co's Gre­go­ry Berrios (7.33) and Mex­i­can Je­sus Rangel (6.90). To­day's ses­sion will be con­duct­ed at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Ch­agua­nas from 6 pm to 10 pm and on Sun­day from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Awards

Norce­ca Olympic Qual­i­fiers In­di­vid­ual awards:

Best Scor­er: Juan Figueroa (Puer­to Ri­co)

Best Spik­er: Matthew An­der­son (USA)

Best Block­er: David Lee (USA)

Best Serv­er: Pe­dro Rangel (Mex­i­co)

Best Dig­ger: Je­sus Rangel (Mex­i­co)

Best Set­ter: Pe­dro Rangel (Mex­i­co)

Best Re­ceiv­er: Keibel Gutier­rez (Cu­ba)

Best Libero: Gre­go­ry Berrios (Cu­ba)

Most Valu­able Play­er: Clay­ton Stan­ley (USA)