T&T girls’ Un­der-17 vol­ley­ball team made a win­ning start to the four-na­tion in­au­gur­al Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) U-17 Cham­pi­onships with a 3-0 de­feat of host Ja­maica at the G C Fos­ter Col­lege of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport in Ja­maica, Thurs­day (Ju­ly 31).

Play­ing in the sec­ond girls’ match on the day af­ter Suri­name de­feat­ed Bar­ba­dos in a sim­i­lar 3-0 fash­ion, the Saleem Ali-coached T&T girls tri­umphed 25-10, 25-16, 25-11 in 64 min­utes.

In the girls’ open­er, Suri­name over­came a stub­born chal­lenge from Bar­ba­dos to come away with a 25-23, 25-11, 25-22 win in one hour and 24 min­utes.

To­day, T&T girls go af­ter their sec­ond win when they play Bar­ba­dos from 11 am while Suri­name faces Ja­maica from 5 pm, ahead of their fi­nal round-robin match­es to­mor­row when T&T comes up against Suri­name from 1 pm, and Ja­maica bat­tles Bar­ba­dos from 4 pm.

At the end of which the top two teams will meet on Sun­day for the gold medal while the third and fourth place teams clash for bronze.

Bar­ba­dos sweeps T&T boys in straight sets

The Cur­tis Bur­kette-coached T&T U-17 boys suf­fered a straight-sets loss to ri­vals Bar­ba­dos 9-25, 15-25, 17-25 in 64 min­utes.

Lead­ing the way for the El­wyn Ox­ley-coached Bar­ba­di­ans, who used their strong serv­ing game to get the win, was out­side hit­ter Isa­iah Jor­dan John, who had a match-high 14 points and was the lone play­er in dou­ble-fig­ure scor­ing while the pair of Daniel Re­ece and Joshua Ash­by chipped in with eight points each, and the duo of Liam Year­wood and cap­tain Pierre Gill, six each.

On the op­po­site side of the net, cap­tain Je­re­mi­ah Jankey led the Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers with six points while Cruz Ca­ma­cho got four and the trio of Shilon Mil­let, Kaden Hors­ford and Joshua For­tune, three points apiece.

Over­all, the Bar­ba­di­ans dom­i­nat­ed T&T in the key as­pects of the con­test and held the ad­van­tage on kills, 29-12; ser­vice aces, 23-7 and 3-1 on blocks while both teams com­mit­ted 20 er­rors each.

Last night, host Ja­maica and Suri­name met in the sec­ond boys’ match while to­day, Suri­name and Bar­ba­dos clash from 1 pm fol­lowed by T&T and Ja­maica at 4 pm while to­mor­row, T&T faces Suri­name from 10 am and Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica con­clude round-robin play at 5 pm, at the end of which the top two teams will meet on Sun­day for the gold medal while the third and fourth place teams clash for bronze.

The CA­ZO­VA U-17 Cham­pi­onship serves as the qual­i­fiers to the NORCE­CA U-17 Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onships which will be held in No­vem­ber 2025, and is al­so the qual­i­fi­er to the FIVB U-17 World Cham­pi­onships, which made its de­but in 2024.

Re­main­ing sched­ule

Boy’s Un­der-17

To­day

Suri­name vs Bar­ba­dos, 12 noon

Ja­maica vs T&T, 3 pm

To­mor­row

T&T vs Suri­name, 10 am

Bar­ba­dos vs Ja­maica, 5 pm

Sun­day

Third place play­off: Third vs Fourth, 12 noon

Fi­nal: First vs Sec­ond, 5 pm

Girls U-17:

To­day

T&T vs Bar­ba­dos, 10 am

Suri­name vs Ja­maica, 5 pm

To­mor­row

T&T vs Suri­name, 12 noon

Ja­maica vs Bar­ba­dos vs Ja­maica, 3 pm

Sun­day

Third place play­off: Third vs Fourth, 10 am

Fi­nal: First vs Sec­ond, 3 pm