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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

T&T v-ballers hunt winning CAZOVA start

by

20140803

This coun­try's women and men teams will both be keen to make win­ning starts when the 15th Se­nior Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Cham­pi­onship serves off at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo, from to­day un­til Sun­day.

The one-week tour­na­ment, host­ed by the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion for the third time, with 1993 and 2002 be­ing the pre­vi­ous years, fea­ture five women and six men's teams.

In the Women's Di­vi­sion, T&T Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers, the four-time reign­ing de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and five-time win­ners over­all (1996, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012) do bat­tle with six-time cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos (1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2002) from 6 pm.

How­ev­er, while the host are the over­whelm­ing favourites it's the Bar­ba­di­ans who have sweet mem­o­ry of play­ing in T&T, hav­ing won the ti­tle the pre­vi­ous two times it was played here, in­clud­ing beat­ing T&T in the 2003 de­cider.

But the Kel­ly-Anne Billingy skip­pered T&T women have beat­en Bar­ba­dos in all their meet­ings since, the last of which was the 2012 fi­nal held in St Croix, US Vir­gin Is­lands and twice in the World Cham­pi­onship qual­i­fiers last year at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine.

For the vic­to­ries and al­most all since the loss in the 2003 fi­nal to the Bar­ba­di­ans, three key com­po­nents of the T&T "Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers" team were Cuban-born coach, Fran­cis­co "Panchee" Cruz, set­ter Renele Forde and op­po­site Krys­tle Es­delle.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, for T&T, Cruz re­signed al­most two months ago, Forde is still on the mend from an in­jured leg and Es­delle, who is due for surgery on her in­jured left shoul­der de­cid­ed to re­tire from the in­ter­na­tion­al game at the con­clu­sion of last month's Fi­nal Round FIVB World Cham­pi­onship Qual­i­fiers at UWI SPEC.

Es­delle, who rep­re­sent­ed the se­nior team for close to a decade was vot­ed as the "Most Valu­able Play­er" of the tour­na­ment at the last CA­ZO­VA Cham­pi­onship held in USVI and was al­ways among the award re­cip­i­ents dur­ing her play­ing ca­reer.

De­spite the re­cent changes, re­cent­ly ap­point­ed T&T coach Nichol­son Drakes who has been hand­ed the task of draw­ing T&T women lev­el with Bar­ba­dos on six ti­tles apiece.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing his team's train­ing ses­sion at the tour­na­ment venue yes­ter­day, Drakes said even though his team play­ing at home will be clear favourites for a fifth straight ti­tle they don't in­tend to take any of the teams light­ly.

"We con­sid­er all the teams as se­ri­ous con­tenders and we just have to take it match by match and get the job done as pro­fes­sion­al as we can be.

One source of con­cern for the for­mer na­tion­al women's as­sis­tant coach to Cruz was his team con­cen­tra­tion lev­el at this point, com­ing off the dis­ap­point­ment of los­ing to Mex­i­co in the World Qual­i­fiers with a spot in Italy up for grabs last month.

"Some of the girls took the loss very bad­ly as it was a last chance for them reach that lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion giv­en their age, but we have to re­group now and fo­cus on this event be­cause none of the teams will be com­ing easy at us."

Billingy said she was not sure if this her last tour­na­ment at the CA­ZO­VA lev­el but that the team was fo­cus on re­tain­ing the ti­tle even with all the changes as it makes it pos­si­ble for op­por­tu­ni­ties at the Pan Amer­i­can and NORCE­CA lev­els.

The Bar­ba­di­an team is a vast­ly ex­pe­ri­enced bunch with the ex­pe­ri­enced one in­clu­sive of Ani­ci Wood and cap­tain Tho­nya Joseph un­der the su­per­vi­sion of coach An­drew Brath­waite, and like T&T al­so have am­bi­tions of adding to their re­gion­al tri­umphs.

Speak­ing on the eve of the tour­na­ment, Brath­waite who was al­so in charge of the team which end­ed sec­ond to T&T in USVI two years ago warned that the team as­sem­bled is the best pos­si­ble by his tech­ni­cal staff and he is hop­ing that they can per­form to the best of their abil­i­ty and make it three in a row on T&T soil.

In to­day's first women's match, Ja­maica and Suri­name, two teams with good blend of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence will have the chance to make the first state­ment of the tour­na­ment when they meet from 3pm fol­lowed by the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at 5pm.

Ba­hamas is the fifth women's team in­volved, but will play its first game on Wednes­day against the Ja­maicans.

At the end of the round-robin se­ries on Sat­ur­day, the top two teams will con­test the fi­nal while the third and four placed teams, bat­tle for bronze, both on Sun­day.

Ab­sent from the tour­na­ment are Vir­gin Is­lands (USVI), the beat­en fi­nal­ist on home soil in 2012, Guade­loupe, Mar­tinique and Haiti.

groups

Tour­na­ment groups:

Women: T&T, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Suri­name

Men:

Group A: Ba­hamas, Cu­ra­cao, Ja­maica

Group B: Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name, T&T

Fix­tures

TO­DAY:

Women: Ja­maica vs Suri­name, 3 pm

Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny, 5 pm

Women: T&T vs Bar­ba­dos, 6 pm

Men: T&T vs Suri­name, 8 pm

Tues­day Au­gust 5:

Men: Cu­ra­cao vs Ba­hamas, 4 pm

Men: Suri­name vs Bar­ba­dos, 6pm

Women: T&T vs Suri­name, 8 pm


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