T&T's Si­mon Blake and Daneil Williams were one of six men's pair­ings to en­joy a 2-0 record at the end of the Fri­day's open­ing day of the third-leg of the NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball Tour, the Gatorade's Guatemala Beach Vol­ley­ball Tour­na­ment at Cam­po Marte Park, Guatemala City, Guatemala.

Play­ing in a four-team Pool E round-robin se­ries, Williams and Blake who were com­ing off a sev­enth place fin­ish from 13 teams at the sec­ond-leg Bo­ca Chi­ca Pres­i­dente Beach Vol­ley­ball Tour­na­ment, in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic last month came from a set down to beat Guatemala-C Luis Tor­res and Mario Ramirez, 16-21, 21-11, 15-3 in 50 min­utes.

The To­co-born duo, who were al­so 11th out of 16 men's team in the open­ing tour­na­ment of the sea­son, the fifth edi­tion of the Cay­man Is­lands Beach Vol­ley­ball Tour­na­ment at Sev­en Miles Beach, Grand Cay­man then swept past Hon­durans, Je­sus Oli­va Quin­tanil­la and Manuel Ser­ra­no 21-17, 21-17 to book a quar­ter­fi­nal spot against the win­ner of Pool D or Pool C, ahead of their fi­nal round-robin en­counter with Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's Luis Castil­lo and Alex Med­i­na yes­ter­day as well.

Castil­lo and Med­i­na won against Tor­ress and Ramirez 21-19, 21-14 af­ter los­ing their open­er against Quin­tanil­la and Ser­ra­no 10-21, 6-21, to leave both pairs lev­el with 1-1 records.

The pairs of Slick Stafford/John May­er (USA-A), Andy Blan­co/Er­ick Gar­ri­do (Guatemala-A), Rober­to Ro­driguez/Erik Had­dock (Puer­to Ri­co-A), Lom­bar­do On­tiveros/Juan Vir­gen of Mex­i­co and Cubans Karell Pina and Ser­gio Gon­za­lez were al­so un­beat­en at the end of the first day.

In Pool C, the oth­er T&T pair to en­ter, Un­der-21 duo, Akim Bushe and Taran De­onath (T&T-B), were beat­en in their two match­es, first ver­sus On­tiveros and Vir­gen, 10-21, 9-21 and then against Cay­man Is­landers' Richard Camp­bell and Dun­can Hamann, 12-21, 21-13, 8-15.

The Mex­i­cans al­so swept past Guatemalan-B, Julio Re­ci­nos and Luis Gar­cia, 21-8, 21-11 and faced Camp­bell and Hamann in their fi­nal match yes­ter­day with a win se­cur­ing an au­to­mat­ic quar­ters spot and sec­ond, a place in the last-16.

T&T orig­i­nal­ly took three teams to Guatemala with Bushe pair­ing with Bran­don Legall, and De­onath with Tevin Joseph, how­ev­er T&T was on­ly al­lowed two teams in the men's tour­na­ment and the coach­ing staff opt­ed to pair Bushe with De­onath.

T&T's women duo, El­ki Phillip and Ap­phia Glas­gow, play­ing on the tour for the first time as part­ners went in­to their fi­nal round-robin Pool D match ver­sus Hon­durans, Gi­na Flo­res and Martha Eu­ce­da need­ing a win to ad­vance to the round-of-16 af­ter both teams were beat­en in their oth­er match in the three-team group by USA-2, Emi­ly Day and Brit­tany Hochevar.

Phillip and Glas­gow were beat­en 8-21, 4-21 while Flo­res and Eu­ce­da, al­so suf­fered at the hands of the North Amer­i­cans, 5-21, 4-21.

The T&T-B com­bi­na­tion of LaTeisha Joseph and Ki­ne­sha Mar­shall were beat­en in their two Pool F match­es, 7-21, 8-21 by Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's Nairo­bi Agra­monte and Di­ana Peguero, as well as Cos­ta Ri­cans, Va­le­ria Va­len­ciano and Ang­ie Mon­tero, 18-21, 21-15, 15-1 to bow out of the tour­na­ment.