NIGEL SI­MON

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

T&T se­nior women’s vol­ley­baller, Chan­non Thomp­son reg­is­tered a game-high 17 points, but it was not enough as her Red Ravens Vils­biburg saw their four-match win­ning streak in the Ger­many Women’s Bun­desli­ga Vol­ley­ball Cham­pi­onship come to an end in a straight sets loss to de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Al­lianz MTV Stuttgart on Sat­ur­day.

Play­ing at the Aus­tra­gung­sort, Schar­rena, Stuttgart, Out­side Hit­ter Thomp­son scored 17 points for the un­der­strength Vils­biburg while Ka­t­ri­na Kokko­nen added 12, and ‘birth­day girl’ Nicole Av­ery Hep­pell, nine in the 17-25, 18-25, 28-30 loss to Stuttgart who go 11 points each from Eline Tim­mer­man, and Alex­is Hart.

Stuttgart lead­ing scor­ers were well sup­port­ed by Marie Scholzel who added nine, Si­mone Lee with eight, Krys­tal Rivers with sev­en, and the pair of Maria Se­gu­ra, and Lau­ra Kun­zler, six points apiece as they im­prove to 18-1 and 53 points at the top of the 11-club stand­ings while Schw­er­iner (16-3) is six points be­hind with 47 fol­lowed by SC Pots­dam (15-4) with 44, Dres­den SC (10-9) with 29 points, and fifth-placed Wies­baden which has an 8-11 and 27 points to be cer­tain of a top eight play­off spot.

How­ev­er, with the loss, Thomp­son and her Vils­biburg team­mates slipped two places on the ta­ble to sev­enth with a 9-10 record and 25 points one adrift of USC Mun­ster which has the same 9-10 record while VFB Suhl (8-11), and Ladies in Black Aachen (8-11), both with 23 points as all four clubs will go in­to the fi­nal reg­u­lar-sea­son match-day still in the hunt for the re­main­ing three play­off spots.

For Vils­biburg it will be a straight­for­ward case of a win and you are in as they will host Suhl at home af­ter the lat­ter won its home match against Aachen 3-0 to set up the mouth­wa­ter­ing con­test at the Ball­sporthalle against the Thuringians on April 1, for the play­off par­tic­i­pa­tion.

In the two oth­er key match­es, Wies­baden faces Aachen, and USC Mun­ster comes up against Pots­dam. The two clubs at the bot­tom of the ta­ble are Schwarz-Weib Er­furt (3-17) with 15 points and cel­lar-placed VC Neuwied (1-18) with three points.