Nigel Si­mon

With just over a month be­fore the start of the 2012 (North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Con­fed­er­a­tion) Women's Olympic Vol­ley­ball qual­i­fiers in Ti­jua­na, Mex­i­co un­cer­tain­ty hangs over this coun­try's par­tic­i­pa­tion. This is be­cause four Eu­ro­pean-based play­ers in Krys­tle Es­delle (Ger­many), Kel­ly-Ann Billingy (France) and Poland-based duo, Chan­non Thomp­son and Sinead Jack have found them­selves in a club-vs-coun­try tug-o-war. In Mex­i­co, T&T women coached by Cuban-born Fran­cis­co "Panchee" Cruz and the reign­ing three-time Caribbean cham­pi­ons are due to com­pete with Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cu­ba, Puer­to Ri­co, Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hon­duras and hosts Mex­i­co from from April 27 to May 6. Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Daymien Stew­art, chief op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer of the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion said that the four play­ers who are key com­po­nents in Cruz's team have all ex­pressed their de­sire to rep­re­sent the red, white and black at the tour­na­ment in Mex­i­co, but there clubs are re­luc­tant to re­lease them.

Stew­art added, "Just re­cent­ly, AZS Bi­a­lystok, the club of Thomp­son and Jack have been on a win­ning role in Poland with the lat­ter even se­cur­ing Most Valu­able Play­er ho­n­ours in a match, so they are very keen to keep the duo as their press for ti­tle ho­n­ours." In terms of the com­pe­ti­tion we will be fac­ing the clubs are al­so of the view T&T does not has a chance of se­cur­ing the Olympic spot and they will be bet­ter served by stay­ing in Eu­rope. He added, "The sit­u­a­tion is al­so the same for Es­delle who's club Schw­er­iner SC are third on the 14-team Bun­desli­ga ta­ble as well as Billingy who is at­tached to the Nantes club in France.

While Stew­art says he will still like the team to go to the qual­i­fiers to help main­tain their world num­ber 33rd rank­ing, he did con­firm the fed­er­a­tion was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some fi­nan­cial prob­lems and will more than like­ly miss the Pan Amer­i­can Cup which is slat­ed for right af­ter the qual­i­fiers. "We are work­ing on a tight bud­get and we al­so have have the ju­nior teams head­ing off to oth­er re­gion­al tour­na­ments as well so we have to se­lect care­ful­ly which events we will be able to send teams to. He ex­plained, "Where some of the tour­na­ments as­sist the fed­er­a­tions with ex­pens­es, the Pan Amer­i­can Cup re­quires the par­tic­i­pat­ing teams to fi­nance their own in­volve­ment and with our lim­it­ed bud­get and so many events this year, we have to skip that event." USA is al­ready qual­i­fied to the 2012 Lon­don Olympic Games af­ter fin­ish­ing in sec­ond place at the FIVB World Cup last No­vem­ber in Japan and is not com­pet­ing in Mex­i­co.