Gideon Dick­son, coach of the T&T se­nior men's vol­ley­ball team, is pleased with the draw for the Norce­ca Men's Olympic Qual­i­fy­ing Tour­na­ment. This coun­try has been grouped with USA, Mex­i­co and Cos­ta Ri­ca in the one-week tour­na­ment to be played from May 7-12 at the Wal­ter Pyra­mid in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, Los An­ge­les. In Cal­i­for­nia, T&T, ranked sixth in Norce­ca, will open the tour­na­ment against de­fend­ing Olympic cham­pi­on USA on May 7, fol­lowed by match­es against Mex­i­co (May 8) and Cos­ta Ri­ca, a day lat­er in Pool B. The tour­na­ment will qual­i­fy the win­ner for the 2012 Olympic Games in Lon­don. Dick­son said both groups are even­ly match and the or­der of match­es could well work in T&T's favour. "It's a good draw in that we will have a chance to see the two oth­er teams play be­fore our match against the Amer­i­cans, who are no doubt favourites in the group.

"Play­ing the USA first up will give us the chance to gauge our­selves with re­spect to the oth­er teams," he end­ed. The na­tion­al squad which is ex­pect­ed to be with­out the ser­vices of its lone pro­fes­sion­al play­er, Por­tu­gal-based Marc-An­tho­ny Hon­ore (SL Ben­fi­ca) due to club com­mit­ments con­tin­ued their prepa­ra­tions with a train­ing ses­sion at the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Tacarigua last night and will do so again at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Ch­agua­nas to­mor­row from 6 pm to 10 pm, and Sun­day at Ch­agua­nas from 9 am to noon. T&T, the reign­ing Caribbean men's cham­pi­on, last com­pet­ed at this stage of the Olympic qual­i­fiers four years ago in Puer­to Ri­co but failed to qual­i­fy for the Bei­jing Olympics in Chi­na.

Squad: Sean Mor­ri­son, Nolan Tash, Ryan Ma­hadeo, Jes­sel Davis, Kevin Nim­rod, Chris­t­ian Fran­cois, Saleem Ali, Rus­sell Pe­na, Kevin Ama­r­ali, Joshua Mo­hammed, Ryan Stew­art, Si­mon Blake, Akim Bushe, Bran­don Legall, Taran­dath De­onath, Mikheil Hoyte, Bryan Ba­nan­tyne, Tevin Joseph.