Ki­une Flec­ther and Nichol­son Drakes, the cap­tain and coach of the T&T Un­der-20 women’s vol­ley­ball team are both con­fi­dent about their team chances at cap­tur­ing the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Cham­pi­onship which serves off at the La Ville de Riv­iere Salee Palais Des Sports from Sun­day un­til Fri­day.

The T&T young women were win­ners in 1997, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2011/2012.

How­ev­er, on the team's last vis­it to Mar­tinique in 2013 it end­ed in the run­ner-up spot to the host.

But speak­ing on the eve of the com­pe­ti­tion which will see T&T face long-time ri­vals Bar­ba­dos and Guade­loupe in Pool B while Mar­tinique, Cu­ra­cao and US Vir­gin Is­lands play in Pool A, Fletch­er and Drakes said they are con­fi­dent that the team can go all the way.

A re­laxed Fletch­er just off a flight from T&T via St Vin­cent and The Grenadines and Bar­ba­dos said, “I feel we have a very strong team here and we just need to play with con­sis­ten­cy to win over­all.”

She added, “Look­ing at the team we have we al­so can dom­i­nate at least three of the in­di­vid­ual awards that will be on of­fer.

The group of girls know each oth­er well from club and school com­pe­ti­tions and I be­lieve it will help our com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the court a lot.”

Drakes said, “Our prepa­ra­tion, in gen­er­al, was very good as we were able to have a lot of train­ing in be­ing able to have more con­trol of var­i­ous dis­ci­plines. The pos­i­tive thing about this group of play­ers as well is that they are the same team that com­pet­ed ear­li­er this year at the Youth CA­ZO­VA Cham­pi­onships in Ja­maica and based on the im­prove­ments made from that time to now, my ex­pec­ta­tions of them are very high”.

For the six-team pre­lim­i­nary round, T&T faces Bar­ba­dos in their open­er on Sun­day from 3 pm be­fore meet­ing Guade­loupe on Mon­day while Bar­ba­dos and Guade­loupe close out round-robin pool play on Tues­day.

This year a new cham­pi­on will be crowned be­cause last year's first-time win­ners Haiti will not be de­fend­ing their ti­tle won by de­feat­ing Bar­ba­dos in their back-yard for the ti­tle.

At the end of the group round-robin stage, the top team will qual­i­fy straight to the semi­fi­nals while the sec­ond and third-placed teams will meet in cross-over quar­ter­fi­nals to de­ter­mine the two oth­er semi­fi­nal­ists.

At the end of the tour­na­ment, the win­ners will ad­vance to the NORCE­CA Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onship qual­i­fiers for next FIVB age-group World Cham­pi­onships.

Tour­na­ment groups and fix­tures

GROUP A

De­cem­ber 8: Mar­tinique vs Cu­ra­cao, 6pm

De­cem­ber 9: Mar­tinique vs US Vir­gin Is­lands, 8pm

De­cem­ber 10: Cu­ra­cao vs US Vir­gin Is­lands 4pm

Group B

De­cem­ber 8: Bar­ba­dos vs Trinidad and To­ba­go, 3pm

De­cem­ber 9: Guade­loupe vs Trinidad and To­ba­go, 2pm

De­cem­ber 10: Bar­ba­dos vs Guade­loupe, 6pm