T&T's Un­der-18 "Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers" de­feat­ed Haiti 27-25, 25-17, 25-11, on Sat­ur­day's sec­ond day of com­pe­ti­tion to top Pool B and ad­vance to the se­mi-fi­nal of the Eighth Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Ju­nior Women's Cham­pi­onships, be­ing held in the US Vir­gin Is­lands. Pol­ish-based Chan­non Thomp­son was in­spi­ra­tional, lead­ing T&T to con­sec­u­tive straight set vic­to­ries, af­ter the team de­feat­ed Bar­ba­dos 25-8, 25-4, 23-22, on Fri­day night.

Fol­low­ing his team's tri­umph, coach Mas­cood Ali ex­pressed his de­sire to see the T&T team im­prove from er­rors made in the first pe­ri­od. "Haiti played well in the first set and we made too many er­rors es­pe­cial­ly with our mid­dle block­ers. We hope to cor­rect this sit­u­a­tion for the semi­fi­nals game," said Ali. Mean­while, T&T cap­tain Saman­tha Prescott of­fered sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments: "We made a good start at the be­gin­ning of the first set but we lost fo­cus as Haiti cap­i­talised on our er­rors and al­most took the set away."

Home team, US Vir­gin Is­lands, took just over an hour to de­feat new-com­ers Bonaire 25-14, 25-13, 25-14. The re­sult saw Bonaire lose twice in as many match­es and will have to set­tle for a place in the quar­ter-fi­nal, along with sec­ond place team in its group. Cu­ra­cao de­feat­ed the same op­po­nents 25-16, 25-14, 25-13. The US Vir­gin Is­lands was sched­uled to meet Cu­ra­cao in both team's fi­nal pool fix­ture, from 8 pm, last evening. The out­come would have de­ter­mined T&T's op­po­nent in the semi­fi­nal. The semi­fi­nal will take place from 7 pm, this evening. The fi­nal and third place play­off are sched­uled for Wednes­day.