Nigel Si­mon

South­ern Unit­ed Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my se­cured a spot in Sat­ur­day's semi­fi­nal round of the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion Carib-spon­sored Men's A Di­vi­sion Cham­pi­onship af­ter a stun­ning up­set of reign­ing cham­pi­ons, Tech­nocrats on Wednes­day night. Boast­ing a few na­tion­al in­door play­ers of its own in Chris­t­ian Fran­cois, Ryan Ma­hadeo, Rus­sell Pe­na and Kevin Nim­rod along with for­mer na­tion­al Nigel Pur­cell, South­ern Unit­ed stunned the star-stud­ded Tech­nocrats squad of Vaughn Mar­tin, Sean Mor­ri­son, Kelvin Al­leyne, Hol­lis Charles and Nichol­son Drakes 25-22, 25-15, 25-19 at the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Tacarigua.

With the win, South­ern Unit­ed end­ed its eight-match round-robin sched­ule with 11 points, the same as Tech­nocrats and Big South East Port of Spain and two be­hind Glam­or­gan. How­ev­er, Glam­or­gan has al­ready played its eight match­es while SE­PoS and Tech­nocrats meet to­day in their fi­nal match at Tacarigua from 7pm. SE­PoS im­proved its chances of top­ping the round-robin se­ries ahead of to­mor­row's semi­fi­nals at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo with a four-set win over To­co Youths Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my, 25-21, 25-13, 24-26, 25-1 in the oth­er match at Tacarigua. In­clud­ed in the To­co squad, which fin­ished at the bot­tom of the five-team ta­ble with ten points were na­tion­al beach vol­ley­ballers and Daneil Williams and Fa­bi­en Whit­field along with se­nior team play­er, Si­mon Blake, while na­tion­al coach Gideon Dick­son, se­nior team cap­tain, and First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion award nom­i­nees Nolan Tash, Akim Bushe and Jes­sel Davis suit­ed up for SE­PoS.

In to­day's oth­er match at Tacarigua, SE­PoS women tack­les Glam­or­gan from 5pm. In the Women's Di­vi­sion, Tech­nocrats leads with 14 points from its com­plet­ed sched­ule while two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on was sec­ond, a point be­hind, ahead of its fi­nal match against South­ern Unit­ed yes­ter­day at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Pleas­antville. Third is Glam­or­gan with ten points and one match left to play while South­ern Unit­ed al­so has ten and SE­PoS, sev­en. Fol­low­ing to­mor­row's semi­fi­nal match­es, the fi­nal and third place match­es will serve off at the same venue next Sat­ur­day.