Nicholas Clarke

The Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T women and Tech­nocrats men both won their third straight ti­tles when the cur­tain came down on the 2010/2011 sea­son T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion Carib-spon­sored Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day. This was at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, Ch­agua­nas. In the men's de­cider, Tech­nocrats, fea­tur­ing a core of past and present na­tion­al play­ers in Nichol­son Drakes, Vaughn Mar­tin, Sean Mor­ri­son, Kelvin "Bu­ju" Al­leyne and Hol­lis Charles, over­came a spir­it­ed per­for­mance from the South­ern Unit­ed Vol­ley­ball Acad­e­my line-up of Chris­t­ian Fran­cois, Rus­sell Pe­na, Nigel Pur­cell, Kevin Nim­rod and Ryan Ma­hadeo 25-18, 25-22, 19-25, 25-19.

In the semi­fi­nal round at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo, a week ear­li­er, Tech­nocrats need­ed five sets to stop Big South East Port-of-Spain (SE­PoS), led by na­tion­al coach Gideon Dick­son and cap­tain Nolan Tash, 20-25, 25-20, 25-16, 22-25, 15-12 while South­ern Unit­ed swept past the Saleem Ali-led Glam­or­gan 25-22, 25-17, 26-24 in the oth­er. Glam­or­gan got some re­demp­tion though, with a tough 25-0, 25-17, 22-25, 15-25, 15-12 win over SE­PoS in the third place match on Sat­ur­day. SE­PoS did not help them­selves as they had to de­fault the first set af­ter ar­riv­ing at the Ch­agua­nas late. In the first fi­nal played, UTT, mi­nus its over­seas trio of pro­fes­sion­al play­ers in Chan­non Thomp­son, Krys­tle Es­delle and Sinead Jack, still had enough fire­pow­er to get past ri­vals Tech­nocrats.

The UTT women's squad of Rheeza Grant, De­lana Mitchell,Shurvette Beck­les, Abi­gail Gloud, Ab­bi Black­man, Cabri­ni Fon­cette and Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford, all na­tion­al play­ers, tri­umphed 25-20, 25-27, 25-22, 25-22 to se­cure a third straight lien on the crown. In last week's semi­fi­nal, UTT dis­patched South­ern Unit­ed 25-15, 25-7, 25-13 in its semi­fi­nal while Tech­n­co­rats com­pris­ing na­tion­al play­ers Kel­ly-Ann Billingy, El­ki Phillip, Pauline Woodroffe and for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain Aisha Sealy-Mor­ri­son won by de­fault from Glam­or­gan. Glam­or­gan women took third via a 24-26, 25-17, 25-20, 18-25, 15-12 win over South­ern Unit­ed. (NC)