U-20 vball women off to Nicaragua

A 12-member national junior (Under-20) women’s volleyball team will leave today at 5 pm via Panama for Nicaragua to compete at the Norceca Continental Junior (Under-20) Women’s Championship. The local squad to be captained by Makila Yorke will overnight in Panama City on its arrival there tonight, before moving onto Managua, Nicaragua for the tournament which runs from Tuesday until August 27. In addition to Yorke, libero and senior team member Rechez Lindsay as well as Kerdisha Douglas are the only new faces in the team to be coached by Macsood Ali compared to the team which participated at the Norceca Women’s U-18 Continental Championship in Tijuana, Mexico on Saturday last, where T&T placed sixth. In Nicaragua, the nine-team tournament will be played at the Gimnasio Polideporstivo Espana and will feature the top five teams in the Norceca rankings, Dominican Republic, USA, Cuba, Mexico and Costa Rica along with T&T, Antigua & Barbuda and Guatemala. 

 

T&T qualified for the tournament having won the Caribbean Zonal Volleyball Association Under-20 title in St Croix, US Virgin Islands, earlier this year, while Antigua & Barbuda won the  Eastern Caribbean Volleyball Association Championship, and Guatemala, the Central American tournament. The 17th ranked T&T faces a tough battle to get out of its three-team group after it was drawn in Group C with the second and third ranked teams, USA and Cuba. Costa Rica, seeded fifth in Norceca is in Group A with eighth ranked Antigua & Barbuda and host Nicaragua while top seeded Dominican Republic is in Group B with fourth ranked Mexico and tenth seeded Guatemala. At the conclusion of the Norceca  Junior Women’s Continental Championship the top three teams will qualify to next year’s  FIVB Junior Women’s World Championships to be held in Czech Republic.