As­tra Ed­wards-Ben­nett will be hop­ing for a re­peat of suc­cess when she puts her Women's Open ti­tle on the line at the Sil­ver Bowl Tour­na­ment host­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ta­ble Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Ch­agua­nas from 9am to­day. Last year in a bat­tle of sis­ters, Ed­wards-Ben­nett of Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T stunned old­er sib­ling and for­mer na­tion­al champ, Aleena Ed­wards 11-7, 13-11,12-10 to claim the ti­tle left va­cant by Na­tal­ie Montes. This year, she is set to make a re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion af­ter be­ing out for al­most one year.

Like last year, the women's com­pe­ti­tion is ex­pect­ed to be fierce­ly con­test­ed with top seed­ed Aleena Ed­wards, Lin­da Par­tap-Bood­han, Cather­ine Spicer and Ash­ley Quashie all gun­ning for Ed­wards-Ben­nett's ti­tle. Join­ing in this bat­tle will be Guyana's top se­nior and ju­nior play­ers, in Tre­nace Lowe and Chelsea Edghill. Lowe tast­ed vic­to­ry twice on lo­cal soil last year while Edghill re­cent­ly won sil­ver in sin­gles at the Un­der-15 Caribbean Cham­pi­onship in Cu­ba. A new men's cham­pi­on will be crowned as Reeza Burke, the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on, will not be tak­ing to the ta­ble be­cause of a per­sis­tent in­jury. In the men's de­cider last year Burke of Ari­ma Hawks whipped So­lo Cru­saders' An­drew Alexan­der, 11-4, 11-6, 11-7.

With Burke ab­sent, UTT's in-form Cur­tis Humphreys', the reign­ing top seed­ed play­er in the coun­try is tipped to take top ho­n­ours and add to his grow­ing re­sume. How­ev­er, Humphreys who re­cent­ly com­pet­ed ad­mirably at the World Team Cham­pi­onships in Ger­many to­geth­er with Dex­ter St Louis and Terell Ab­bott claim­ing third spot in their Men's di­vi­sion will face a strong chal­lenge from a resur­gent An­tho­ny "Sand­fly" Brown, Alexan­der, the ever-green Li­onel Darceuil and the new gen­er­a­tion of young play­ers led by Aaron Wil­son and Arun Roop­nar­ine. The ju­nior duo, both in their ear­ly teens are on a high af­ter medal win­ning per­for­mances at the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed Un­der-15 Caribbean Cham­pi­onship held in Cu­ba ear­li­er this month in Cu­ba.

Women's Squad

T&T women's vol­ley­ball squad: An­drea Kin­sale, Jali­cia Ross, Shurvette Beck­les, Rheeza Grant, Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford, Afe­sha Olton, De­lana Mitchell, Ab­by Black­man, Krys­tle Es­delle (cap­tain), Abi­gail Gloud, Renele Forde.

Tech­ni­cal staff: Fran­cis­co Cruz (coach), Nichol­son Drakes (as­sis­tant coach), Bev­er­ly Fook (man­ag­er).