Top local women's beach volleyball pair, Ayana Dyette and Nancy Joseph made a bold step towards earning a ticket to represent T&T in the women's competition at the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games carded for Mexico, later this year.
They played unbeaten in the first of three four-team round-robin qualifiers at Saith Park, Chaguanas on Saturday.
Dyette and Joseph, who have been T&T's lone womens' representatives on the NORCECA Beach Volleyball Circuit this season, outplayed FIVB World Under-19 Championships and Nanjing Youth Olympics-bound duo, Chelsi Ward and Malika Davidson 21-11, 21-17 before powering past long time rivals, Elki Phillip and Pauline Woodroffe 21-9, 21-13 and Apphia Glasgow and La Teisha Joseph 21-16, 21-8 to end with a 3-0 record.
Phillip and Woodroffe took second spot with a 2-1 mark after beating Glasgow and Joseph 21-10, 21-16, and Davidson and Ward 17-21, 21-14, 21-19 while Glasgow and Joseph defeated Chelsi Ward and Malika Davidson 15-21, 21-14, 15-11 for third.
Overall, it was the eighth tournament win on home soil for Dyette and Joseph who are expected to depart for Canada on Wednesday to compete in the sixth leg of the 2014 NORCECA Tour.
So far this season, Dyette and Joseph were 13th in the fifth leg on the sand courts of Huixquilucan, Toluca, Mexico, last month after starting off with an 11th-placed finish in the Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands followed by 12th in Guatemala City and a best so far of seventh, in Antigua Guatemala during the third leg.
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