Nigel Si­mon

Tech­nocrats sound­ed a warn­ing to all clubs in the Flow T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion Pre­mier Di­vi­sion League when it swept long-time ri­val Glam­or­gan in both their men and women sea­son open­ers at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Ch­agua­nas, on Tues­day night.

Both match­es were re­peats of last sea­son's ti­tle de­ciders, how­ev­er, by the end of the open­ing night of com­pe­ti­tion, Tech­nocrats were the ones beat­ing their chest loud­est as they tar­get the top prize of $30,000 in each di­vi­sion.

Last year, reign­ing Se­nior Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Men's Cham­pi­onship "Most Valu­able Play­er" Si­mon Blake led Tech­nocrats to the men's ti­tle.

But for this sea­son, Blake who is al­so part of the na­tion­al beach vol­ley­ball team (Daneil Williams/Fa­bi­en Whit­field and Si­mon Blake/Chris­t­ian Fran­cois) which got sil­ver in the Sec­ond Round of NORCE­CA Con­ti­nen­tal Olympic Qual­i­fiers in An­tigua last month to book a Third Round has re­turned to his home club, To­co Youths Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my.

How­ev­er, Tech­nocrats showed its depth on the night, led by new Cap­tain New­ton Grant, and fel­low na­tion­al play­ers Mar­lon Phillip and Nicholas Prescott as well as ex-cap­tain and na­tion­al stand-out Sean Mor­ri­son, they ral­lied for a come-from-be­hind win over the Saleem Ali and Ryan Stew­art led Glam­or­gan in five en­ter­tain­ing sets, 18-25, 25-20, 26-24, 13-25, 17-15 in two hours and 17 min­utes.

The oth­er teams in the men's com­pe­ti­tion are BIG South East Port-of-Spain (SE­PoS), Chal­lengers, De­fence Force, South­ern Unit­ed Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my, Ti­tans, To­co Youths Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my and T&T De­vel­op­ment Acad­e­my.

The men will con­test one round of com­pe­ti­tion at the end of which the top two will qual­i­fy straight to the semi­fi­nals, and third to sixth, the quar­ter­fi­nals.

...Billingy, Forde pow­er

Tech­nocrats to vic­to­ry

Ear­li­er on in the night's open­ing match, cur­rent na­tion­al cap­tain Renele Forde and her pre­de­ces­sor, Kel­ly-Anne Billingy com­bined to lead Tech­nocrats to a straight sets win, 26-24, 25-18, 25-20 over de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Glam­or­gan in a re­peat of last sea­son's ti­tle match.

Out­side hit­ter, Billingy, a for­mer top Caribbean spik­er, scor­er and "Most Valu­able Play­er" awardee led all scor­ers with 13 points, in­clu­sive of eight spikes while Forde added 11, high­light­ed by four spikes, two blocks and two aces apiece in the one hour and 23 min­utes con­test.

Na­tion­al youth team cap­tain, Nico­lette De Mille chipped in with sev­en points for the win­ners against her for­mer club while Ma­li­ka Charles got six, and An­drea Kin­sale, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er, had four.

On the op­po­site side of the net for the Glam­or­gan squad which fea­tured a host of na­tion­al youth team play­ers Re­an­na Young had a team-high nine points, se­nior T&T in­ter­na­tion­als, mid­dle-block­er Jali­cia Ross-Ky­dd got eight, Kay­lon Cruick­shank, six, and Ba­hami­an im­port, Avoni Sey­mour, five in the loss.

While both teams a bit ner­vous with a com­bined 60 er­rors, it was ev­i­dent that Tech­nocrats was up for the chal­lenge and dom­i­nat­ed on spikes 28-21 and aces, 9-5 while Glam­or­gan had the slight edge on blocks, 8-7.

The oth­er clubs in the Women's Pre­mier Di­vi­sion are BIG SE­POS, South­ern Unit­ed Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my, Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), West Side Stars and T&T De­vel­op­ment Acad­e­my.

The top two teams at the end of the two rounds of women's match­es will qual­i­fy straight to the semi­fi­nals, while third to sixth con­test quar­ter­fi­nals.

The men and women win­ners will each col­lect $30,000 while sec­ond gets $20,000; third $15,000; fourth–$10,000 while fifth and sixth will get $7500, and the oth­er plac­ings $5,000 each.

Pri­or to the start of the dou­ble-head­er, a brief open­ing cer­e­mo­ny took place af­ter which Min­is­ter of Sports, Dar­ryl Smith took the first serve.

Al­so in at­ten­dance and mak­ing brief ad­dress­es were T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Flow, Bri­an Collins; Wendy Mc Don­ald Mar­ket­ing Di­rec­tor of Flow; and NORCE­CA vice-pres­i­dent Mush­taque Mo­hammed and Daymi­an Stew­art Pres­i­dent of the T&TVF. The night will al­so fea­tured a per­for­mance by new­ly-crowned In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch win­ner Aaron "Voice" St Louis, who per­formed his hit song, Cheers To Life.