Nigel Si­mon

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

The sec­ond ranked pair of Si­mon Blake and Chris­t­ian Fran­cois came up trumps for pre-tour­na­ment favourites, T&T as they won both their match­es against Cu­ra­cao to se­cure a 3-1 semi­fi­nal tri­umph in the Sec­ond Round of NORCE­CA Con­ti­nen­tal Cup qual­i­fiers to this year's Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games Beach Vol­ley­ball Tour­na­ment at Cast­aways Beach, Jol­ly Har­bour, An­tigua, yes­ter­day

When the 12-team tour­na­ment com­pris­ing the six top teams each from the first round of qual­i­fiers in the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) and the East­ern Caribbean Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EC­VA) served off on Fri­day, top ranked T&T pair Fa­bi­en Whit­field and Daneil Williams won both their match­es and a fifth and de­cid­ing "Gold­en Set" over Bar­ba­dos to se­cure a 3-2 quar­ter­fi­nal vic­to­ry.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day, Blake and Fran­cois came to the par­ty with two cru­cial vic­to­ries as Whit­field and Williams en­joyed a mix day of for­tunes.

The To­co-born pair of Whit­field and Williams got their team off to an­oth­er win­ning via their 21-18, 23-21 de­feat of a stub­born Hen­rich Daal and Gi­an­dro Tokaay (Cu­ra­cao-B), 21-18, 23-21 while Blake and Fran­cois (TT-B) came from be­hind to beat Dar­win Col­i­na and No­randy Bonafa­sia (Cu­ra­cao-A), 12-21, 21-19, 15-7 for a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five-match se­ries and with­in a win of a spot in to­day's fi­nal against US Vir­gin Is­lands with first serve from 1.40 pm.

How­ev­er, against the odds, Col­i­na and Bonafa­sia (Cu­ra­cao-A) stunned a Whit­field and Williams 21-16, 21-18 to hand the T&T pair, their first loss in qual­i­fi­ca­tion dat­ing back to the first round on home soil last May.

But any chance of the match go­ing to a "Gold­en Set" was halt­ed by the en­er­getic pair­ing of Blake and Fran­cois who made up for their first day shab­by dis­play by pow­er­ing past Daal and Tokaay 21-15, 21-15 Un­der blis­ter­ing sun­shine to seal a 3-1 vic­to­ry.

Com­ment­ing on the win, Fran­cois said com­ing off a poor show­ing in their first match as a team he along with his play­ing part­ner (Blake) had to step up their game."We knew we did not play to our true po­ten­tial against Bar­ba­dos, but to­day we had much bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion and played a lot bet­ter."

Blake added, "On Fri­day we had a mis­er­able day and did not pull our weight as part of the T&T team. But to­day we showed what we are ca­pa­ble off a pair and even though we were play­ing on­ly our sec­ond match as a pair in a long while, we looked much im­proved from our first match.

"We knew we could not let our team-mates down again, and for­tu­nate­ly we did not be­cause to­day (yes­ter­day) they did not en­joy one of their best days and we were able to pull it through with out two wins to get to the fi­nal," said Blake, the reign­ing Se­nior Caribbean In­door Vol­ley­ball Cham­pi­onship "Most Valu­able Play­er" awardee.

Ja­maica al­so start­ed well against USVI with its pair of vet­er­an Mark Lewis and Ryck Webb (Ja­maica-A) ral­ly­ing past Bri­an Kwas­ny/Dil­lon Lus­ni­ak (USVI-B) 21-16, 11-21, 15-10 for a 1-0 ad­van­tage.

But that was the last bit of en­joy­ment for the "Reg­gae Spik­ers" as Jake Die Trich and Marc Lomeli (USVI-A) won in three sets over Tris­ton Hitch­man and Christo­pher Wal­ters (Ja­maica-B), 16-21, 21-10, 15-7 to even the match at 1-1 be­fore Die Trich and Lomeli hum­bled Lewis and Webb 21-12, 21-17, and Kwas­ny and Lus­ni­ak closed out the match thanks to their de­feat of Hitch­man and Wal­ters, 21-13, 21-13.

De­spite the los­ing their main draw semi­fi­nals, Cu­ra­cao and Ja­maica were al­ready as­sured of qual­i­fy­ing among the top eight teams to the Third Round of NORCE­CA qual­i­fiers along with both fi­nal­ists.

And they were joined by the quar­tet of Bar­ba­dos, St Kitts/Nevis, Suri­name and St Lu­cia which all won their Losers Draw round-of-16 match­es against Dutch St Maarten (3-0), An­tigua & Bar­bu­da (3-0), St Vin­cent and The Grenadines (3-2) and Do­mini­ca (3-0) re­spec­tive­ly.

In the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the Losers Draw, St Lu­cia beat Suri­name 3-1 to set up a semi­fi­nal with Cu­ra­cao while Bar­ba­dos blanked St Kitts/Nevis 3-0 and will face Ja­maica in the oth­er Losers Draw semi­fi­nal for a place in the bronze medal match.

St Kitts/Nevis and Suri­name will meet for sev­enth spot while the losers of the Bar­ba­dos/Ja­maica and St Lu­cia/Cu­ra­cao match­es meet for fifth.