NIGEL SI­MON

As part of their prepa­ra­tions for the 2018 FIVB Women’s Vol­ley­ball World Cham­pi­onship, T&T se­nior women’s vol­ley­ball team, known as the ‘Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers’ will be one of sev­en NORCE­CA Con­fed­er­a­tion teams which will get the chance to play and train in Japan ahead of the tour­na­ment which takes place from Sep­tem­ber 19 to Oc­to­ber 20.

In ad­di­tion to T&T, cham­pi­ons USA, Cu­ba, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cana­da, Puer­to Ri­co and Mex­i­co will al­so train and play warm-up match­es.

The T&T women’s team coached by Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic-born Fran­cis­co ‘Panchee’ Cruz qual­i­fied for its first World Cham­pi­onship af­ter fin­ish­ing sec­ond to Mex­i­co with a 2-1 record in a four-team NORCE­CA Con­ti­nen­tal Women’s Cham­pi­onship Qual­i­fy­ing Tour­na­ment. T&T record­ed wins over Cos­ta Ri­ca and Do­mini­ca last Oc­to­ber.

It was a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment for the sev­en-time Caribbean cham­pi­ons T&T women as their qual­i­fi­ca­tion erased the heart-ache of their last round fail­ure.

Five years ago they came with­in a win of se­cur­ing a spot at the World Cham­pi­onship in Italy, but the team lost to host Cu­ba in a group-de­cider af­ter wins over Cu­ra­cao and Haiti. A few months lat­er, this time on home soil it was Mex­i­co that de­feat­ed T&T af­ter wins against Cos­ta Ri­ca, Nicaragua and Pana­ma with on­ly one spot up for grabs.

T&T ranked 34th in the world is grouped with de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and world sec­ond ranked USA , fifth ranked Rus­sia, South Ko­rea (#10th), Thai­land (#16), and Azer­bai­jan (#24) at the Kobe Green Are­na in their First Round Pool C group. Twen­ty-four teams will par­tic­i­pate across six cities.

In ad­di­tion to the par­tic­i­pat­ing in Japan, the na­tion­al women’s team will al­so look for­ward to com­pet­ing at FIVB Women’s Na­tions League, a re­place­ment for the FIVB Grand Prix com­pe­ti­tion.

Speak­ing ear­li­er this month in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, NORCE­CA Pres­i­dent, Cristo­bal Marte Hof­fiz an­nounced that all the teams from his con­fed­er­a­tion will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play and train with lo­cal teams be­fore en­ter­ing in the fab­u­lous event.

The vis­its of those teams have been co­or­di­nat­ed with Hof­fiz and the diplo­mat­ic au­thor­i­ties of the Japan­ese Em­bassy in San­to Domin­go and the sup­port of Japan­ese sport­ing goods cor­po­ra­tions as Molten and Mizuno.

“We are very pleased with the sup­port be­ing re­ceived from the au­thor­i­ties of Japan through the diplo­mat­ic chan­nels in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic as well as from two dis­tin­guished col­lab­o­ra­tors of NORCE­CA like Molten and Mizuno,” Marte Hof­fiz said.

The T&T women who made their FIVB World Grand Prix de­but last year and will fea­ture no few­er than five over­seas-based pro­fes­sion­als - Chan­non Thomp­son, Krys­tle Es­delle, Renele Forde, Sinead Jack, Dar­lene Ramdin - will be re­ceived by the city of Hemi­ji and its vol­ley­ball team Hemi­ji Vic­to­ri­na which is coached by the leg­endary for­mer set­ter Yoshi Takeshi­ta.