Sinead Jack-Kisal, a for­mer T&T in­ter­na­tion­al vol­ley­baller, be­came the first Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean play­er to cap­ture the FIVB Women's Club World Cham­pi­onship Vol­ley­ball crown when her Ecza­cıbaşı Dy­nav­it Is­tan­bul out­last­ed fel­low Turk­ish club Vak­if­Bank in five sets in the fi­nal of the 16th edi­tion Sun­day.

Play­ing at the Drag­on Sports Cen­tre of the Tian­jin Peo­ple’s Gym­na­si­um in Hangzhou, Chi­na, Jack-Kisal, who is now a Turk­ish cit­i­zen, was one of four play­ers to score in dou­ble fig­ures for Eczacibasi as they emerged vic­to­ri­ous against archri­vals Vak­if­Bank Spor Ku­lubu 19-25, 25-23, 25-23, 23-25, 15-9 to claim their third world ti­tle, af­ter 2015 and 2016, and their sixth over­all medal.

Four-time cham­pi­on Vak­if­Bank’s sil­ver placed them on their ninth Club World Cham­pi­onship podi­um. The bronze medals went to Chi­nese hosts Tian­jin Bo­hai Bank, their first podi­um fin­ish in the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter three par­tic­i­pa­tions.

Vak­if­Bank was well in con­trol through­out the first set and took it by a wide mar­gin. Their dom­i­na­tion was ex­tend­ed in­to the sec­ond set and they broke away with a lead as wide as eight points at 12-4, but then Eczacibasi worked their way back, caught up at 20-20 and went on to claim the set by 25-23. The third set of­fered a fierce and even bat­tle.

The lead changed hands sev­er­al times be­fore Eczacibasi again emerged with a nar­row 25-23 win to edge for­ward in the match.

Set four was not much dif­fer­ent, but it was Vak­if­Bank that was ahead in the score for the most part, with Eczacibasi tak­ing over oc­ca­sion­al­ly.

In the end, the set was once again de­cid­ed by the nar­row­est of mar­gins, go­ing Vak­if­Bank’s way, to prompt a tie-break­er.

Pow­ered by their Gen­er­a­tion O star Ti­jana Boskovic of Ser­bia and Cana­di­an out­side Alexa Gray, Eczacibasi took an ear­ly lead in the fifth set and nev­er let go.

The Ser­bian strik­er ham­mered the 15-9 match win­ner with a block-out swing to get the ti­tle cel­e­bra­tions un­der­way.

The even du­el on the court re­sult­ed in mixed over­all sta­tis­tics with Vak­if­Bank out-block­ing (16-14 in stuffs) their op­po­nents and com­mit­ting few­er un­forced er­rors (16-24), while the win­ners pre­vailed in of­fence (73-63 in spike kills) and in serv­ing (4-2 in aces).

Boskovic led Eczacibasi to vic­to­ry with 27 points to her name with her tal­ly in­clu­sive of one ace and one block while Out­side hit­ter Hande Bal­adin con­tributed 20 points, and Alexa Gray and mid­dle block­er Jack-Kisal fin­ished with 17 and 12 points, re­spec­tive­ly.

Vak­if­Bank’s Amer­i­can op­po­site Jor­dan Thomp­son topped the match chart with as many as 33 points, al­so in­clu­sive of one ace and one block while her com­pa­tri­ot Chi­a­ka Og­bogu and Brazil­ian out­side and cap­tain Gabriela Guimaraes scored 16 points each for Vak­if­Bank.

Com­ment­ing on the achieve­ment of Jack-Kisal, who can no longer play for the land of her birth af­ter ac­quir­ing Turk­ish cit­i­zen­ship through her mar­riage, T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent, Daymi­an Stew­art said it was a very proud and bit­ter­sweet mo­ment for T&T.

He added, "It points to the type of tal­ent that we have lo­cal­ly and for that tal­ent to achieve its max­i­mum she ba­si­cal­ly had to cut lo­cal ties. So it's a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion for us to re­al­ly look at and ex­am­ine our­selves as a na­tion in sport and where we are at and what we pro­vide, but at the same time her achieve­ment is some­thing for the peo­ple of T&T to be very proud of."

"It's a proven tes­ta­ment to the de­ci­sion to let her go and achieve the most that she can with­out self­ish­ly hold­ing on to things we can­not pro­vide. So she went on a very short space of time and win a world club ti­tle.

In the bronze medal match ear­li­er on Sun­day, Tian­jin Bo­hai Bank de­light­ed the home crowd with a 25-23, 25-20, 17-25, 25-19 vic­to­ry over Brazil’s Den­til Pra­ia Clube of Uber­lan­dia to cel­e­brate a his­toric achieve­ment, the first Club World Cham­pi­onship podi­um for the team, af­ter three ap­pear­ances.

It was al­so the sec­ond-ever bronze for a Chi­nese club af­ter Guang­dong Ever­grande of Guangzhou fin­ished third in 2013. Mean­while, Den­til Pra­ia’s fifth at­tempt to reach the Club World Cham­pi­onship failed again and they on­ly matched their pre­vi­ous best re­sult, the fourth place in 2018. Sun­day’s win was Tian­jin’s third at the Club World Cham­pi­onships. Their first, back in 2019, al­so came at Den­til Pra­ia’s ex­pense.