Nigel Si­mon

Na­tion­al women's vol­ley­ball play­er Kel­ly-Anne Billingy had a team-high 20 points to lead Va­len­cianas de Jun­cos to a fourth straight win in the Puer­to Ri­co Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion 42nd Women's Su­per League on Wednes­day night. Play­ing be­fore its home sup­port­ers in Baya­mon, Jun­cos over­came cel­lar-placed Mets de Guayn­abo 25-15, 25-23, 18-25, 25-17 to con­tin­ue its push for a quar­ter­fi­nal spot in the ten-team tour­na­ment.

The con­sis­tent Kel­ly Wing added 16 points, Er­i­ca Lott got 12, Ray­mar Rob­les eight and Sol Gon­za­lez six for 2004 cham­pi­on which is joint fourth on the stand­ings with six vic­to­ries from 13 match­es, the same as Ponce.

Katie Wilkins led Guayn­abo with 20 points al­so while Dulce Telles chipped in with 14 and Mer­cy Hamp­ton, 11. Speak­ing via tele­phone af­ter the win, 23-year-old Billingy, the first women from T&T to play vol­ley­ball on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, said the win­ning streak feels amaz­ing. "It start­ed with the game at Mayaguez and now we are serv­ing ex­treme­ly well and our ball con­trol has en­abled us to run our of­fense to great ef­fect. We have to keep tak­ing each team one at a time. Right now we're in fourth place and hope to keep get­ting bet­ter every time we play."

With team cap­tain Sheila Oca­sio still out due to in­jury, Billingy said things were re­al­ly tough but their mid­dle block­ers have stepped up and are do­ing an amaz­ing job. "Things will on­ly get bet­ter when she re­turns, we're ex­cit­ed to play ta­ble lead­ers Toa Ba­ja be­cause they're the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons. Go­ing in­to that match on Mon­day we are look­ing a lot bet­ter than we did at the be­gin­ning of the sea­son so it should be a great game," end­ed Billingy. Toa Ba­ja de­feat­ed Car­oli­na in straight sets to im­prove to 13-1 while Catano re­mained sec­ond on the ta­ble af­ter edg­ing out Ponce 3-2 while Mayaquez is third with a record of 9-4.