Nigel Si­mon

The lo­cal teams of Akim Bushe/Tevin Joseph and Ma­li­ka Charles/La Teisha Joseph left here on Mon­day night for Poland via Venezuela to rep­re­sent this coun­try at the in­au­gur­al FIVB Beach Vol­ley­ball Un­der-23 Cham­pi­onship in Mys­low­ice, from to­day un­til Sun­day.Ac­com­pa­ny­ing the lo­cal play­ers were David Thomas and Ja­son Den­nis who will serve as coach­es of the men's and women's teams re­spec­tive­ly.The 32-team event will fea­ture teams from five con­ti­nen­tal con­fed­er­a­tions that com­prise the FIVB.T&T is one of six NORCE­CA teams and along with St Lu­cia, are the first two Caribbean teams to qual­i­fy for the World Cham­pi­onships.The lo­cals qual­i­fi­ca­tion came af­ter their se­nior na­tion­al teams per­formed cred­itably on the NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball Cir­cuit last year, in both men's and women's com­pe­ti­tion cul­mi­nat­ing in a first ever medal for T&T, bronze on home soil by To­co-born pair, Daneil Williams and Fabi­an Whit­field at Mis­sion Beach.

Both men were al­so fourth in one of the oth­er legs in St Lu­cia while the women's team of Ayana Dyette had two fourth place fin­ish­es.Speak­ing on Sun­day night, pri­or to the team's de­par­ture, Thomas who al­so coach­es the na­tion­al men's beach vol­ley­ball teams said if the men's team gets to the top 24 it will be a great achieve­ment."We are go­ing in­to the com­pe­ti­tion with­out any knowl­edge of the teams we may face. The weath­er is ex­pect­ed to be very cold as well, and we were able to get some sand socks," added Thomas."In ad­di­tion, our prepa­ra­tion was not as good as it could have been due to a lack of fund­ing."We were hop­ing to get some kind of as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of Sports with re­spect to the use of the elite train­ing fa­cil­i­ty at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cur­pao to aid with our phys­i­cal strength­en­ing, but there were some de­mands we need­ed to meet, but did not ad­here too and we missed out."

Asked about the qual­i­ty of the squad, Thomas said the team is very su­pe­ri­or skill-wise and have the ex­pe­ri­ence of play­ing the last NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball Cir­cuit tour­na­ment in Guatemala .

Den­nis was more crit­i­cal of the team's prepa­ra­tions say­ing it was about 50 per cent of what it should have been. He said, "We were sup­pose to get a lot of things to help us pre­pare for this event, but due to the lack of fi­nances, every­thing had to be scaled back."Asked about his ex­pec­ta­tions in Poland, Den­nis, al­so coach of the se­nior women's beach vol­ley­ball team said that he had al­ready set the play­ers both in­di­vid­ual and team goals and once that could be ac­com­plished he would be sat­is­fied."The com­pe­ti­tion will be a tough one and re­al­is­ti­cal­ly I'm not ex­pect­ing us to be in the top ten. If we get there, it will be a huge ac­com­plish­ment based on our prepa­ra­tions."

For most of the teams in the com­pe­ti­tion this will pro­vide the fi­nal step in their beach vol­ley­ball de­vel­op­ment be­fore they progress up to the se­nior ranks, which was the orig­i­nal idea be­hind stag­ing a com­pe­ti­tion that pro­vides a third age group, World Cham­pi­onships af­ter the U21 and U19 tour­na­ments.With six va­can­cies per con­fed­er­a­tion avail­able in the main draw, each con­fed­er­a­tion had the op­tion of or­gan­is­ing a qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment to qual­i­fy the teams or nom­i­nate their best six rep­re­sen­ta­tives to play in­side the main draw of 32 teams (eight pools of four teams with the top three teams ad­vanc­ing to the 24-team sin­gle elim­i­na­tion fi­nal phase) per gen­der, with a max­i­mum of one team per gen­der per coun­try and two teams per gen­der for the host coun­try.Na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions were al­so able to reg­is­ter their teams for the tour­na­ment, en­rolling di­rect­ly in­to a qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment to be held to­day.

Since, not all 30 spots in the main draw were filled by the con­fed­er­a­tions (ten va­cant in the women and five va­cant in the men), the top five women's coun­tries based on the FIVB na­tion­al fed­er­a­tion rank­ing not al­ready rep­re­sent­ed in the main draw–Switzer­land, Spain, Nor­way, Italy, and Lithua­nia–were moved up the qual­i­fi­ca­tion phase. The re­main­ing five va­can­cies for women and five for men will be played off for in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ment.Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the Un­der-23 World Cham­pi­onship, T&T will al­so be rep­re­sent­ed by a men's and women's teams at the Un­der-21 Cham­pi­onship slat­ed for June 19-23 in Umag, Croa­t­i­aIn Croa­t­ia, Taran­dath De­onath and Bran­don Legall will don the T&T colours in the men's com­pe­ti­tion while Ma­li­ka David­son and Chelsea Ward com­pete in the women's.