T&T men's beach vol­ley­ballers fin­ished joint sixth with Puer­to Ri­co and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic on the NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball rank­ings when the 2012 Cir­cuit con­clud­ed last Sun­day in Oran­jes­tad, Aru­ba.

Dur­ing the year, the T&T men's team of Daneil Williams/Fa­bi­en Whit­field, Whit­field/Si­mon Blake, Kevin Rivers/Chris­t­ian Fran­cois, Blake/Col­in Bernard and Ja­son Den­nis/Rivers com­bined for a to­tal of 960 points.

The NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball Cir­cuit con­sist­ed of 11 tour­na­ments in­clud­ing two in Mex­i­co, and one each in Cay­man Is­lands, Guatemala, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cu­ba, Puer­to Ri­co, USA, St Lu­cia, T&T and Aru­ba.

The lo­cal To­co-born duo of 24-year-olds Whit­field and Williams al­so cre­at­ed his­to­ry on the cir­cuit this sea­son be­fore their home ground at Mis­sion Beach, To­co, on No­vem­ber 18, when they won this coun­try's first medal in the sev­en-year his­to­ry of the com­pe­ti­tion, a bronze with a 27-25, 19-21, 15-13 win over Amer­i­cans We­st­on Cari­co and Curt Top­pel.

Two weeks ear­li­er at Gros Islet, St Lu­cia, Whit­field and Williams came close to a medal but lost to St Lu­cian home­town duo Joseph Cler­cent and Julien Bis­cette in the bronze-medal clash.

The lo­cal pair was al­so fifth in Guatemala in the sec­ond tour­na­ment while they al­so com­pet­ed to­geth­er in Cay­man Is­lands, reach­ing the fi­nal 16.

Blake teamed up with Whit­field for the Bo­ca Chi­ca leg of the tour due to an in­jury to Williams while Rivers and Fran­cois rep­re­sent­ed T&T in Cal­i­for­nia. At Mis­sion Beach, T&T was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Blake/Bernard and Den­nis/Rivers.

USA fin­ished atop the rank­ings in both gen­ders and was pre­sent­ed with two cheques for US$5,000 by Nel­son Ramirez, gen­er­al man­ag­er of NORCE­CA, and Ar­nal­do S&aa­cute;nchez, pres­i­dent of the Beach Vol­ley­ball Com­mis­sion to the USA na­tion­al fed­er­a­tion, via the play­ers who com­pet­ed in Aru­ba.

USA tal­lied 1,440 points in both gen­ders fol­lowed by Cana­da (1,240) in the men's di­vi­sion and 1,305 among the women.

Guatemala (1,000) and St Lu­cia (975) were the oth­er coun­tries ahead of T&T among the men while in the women's cat­e­go­ry, Mex­i­co (1,260), Cos­ta Ri­ca (1,165), Puer­to Ri­co (1,070) and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (970) were ahead of sev­enth-placed T&T, which had a best plac­ing of fourth at two sep­a­rate events.

The pair of Ayana Dyette and El­ki Phillip had a fourth-place fin­ish in St Lu­cia af­ter los­ing to Cana­da's Kristi­na Vicek and Vic­to­ria Cow­ley in the bronze-medal con­test-this, af­ter Cos­ta Ri­cans, In­grid

Morales and Na­talia Al­faron stopped the lo­cal women in the se­mi-fi­nals 10-21, 9-21 while two weeks lat­er on home soil, Dyette part­nered Nan­cy Joseph for fourth as well, this time los­ing to the

Cos­ta Ri­cans 13-21, 10-21 in the bronze match fol­low­ing an 18-21, 12-21 loss at the hands of Amer­i­cans Tra­cy­lyn Weam­er and Tealle Hunkus in the semis.

The lo­cal pair­ing of Shenelle Gor­don and La-Teisha Joseph al­so reached the quar­ter­fi­nals on de­but in To­co be­fore bow­ing out to Hunkus and Weam­er, the same as An­drea Davis and El­ki Phillip who were oust­ed by even­tu­al gold medal win­ners Sum­mer Day and Emi­ly Ross, al­so in the quar­ter. Mean­while, Ap­phia Glas­gow and Sher­va Charles, who made it sev­en lo­cal teams in To­co, did not reach the knock­out stage. Gor­don and Joseph al­so com­pet­ed in Aru­ba with­out win­ning a match.