T&T’s ju­nior women’s vol­ley­ball team coach Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford has blamed her team’s lack of prepa­ra­tions and be­ing short-hand­ed for their win­less dis­play at the sev­en-team Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games Women’s Vol­ley­ball Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Tour­na­ment in Aguas­calientes, Mex­i­co.

The T&T young women end­ed the tour­na­ment in the cel­lar-spot af­ter los­ing their sixth-placed play­off with pre­vi­ous­ly win­less team Guatemala 19-25, 17-25, 18-25 at the Olympic Gym­na­si­um of Aguas­calientes in which they com­mit­ted 35 un­forced er­rors

The de­feat fol­lows sim­i­lar out­comes against reign­ing tour­na­ment cham­pi­ons the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic 8-25, 5-25, 5-25 in their Pool A round-robin open­er on Wednes­day in which they made 30 un­forced er­rors and a day lat­er ver­sus Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion ri­vals Suri­name, 17-25, 18-25, 24-26, high­light­ed by 45 un­forced er­rors.

With the two de­feats in their pool, the T&T girls missed out on qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the in­au­gur­al Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games card­ed for Cali, Colom­bia in No­vem­ber.

How­ev­er, even be­fore reach­ing Mex­i­co, Clif­ford and her team were dealt a blow when two play­ers were not al­lowed to board the team’s de­par­ture flight last Mon­day, leav­ing the team with eight play­ers.

Clif­ford, a for­mer na­tion­al women’s team libero and as­sis­tant coach and se­nior team play­er Dar­lene Ramdin along with cap­tain Rayquelle Dick­son, Shan­ice Cot­toy, Amaris No­ray, De­siree Don­ald, Iyanu Small, Ja­da Craw­ford and Aaliyah Alex­is were sched­uled to leave for Mex­i­co via con­nect­ing flights in Guyana, Pana­ma City and Mex­i­co City.

This was in ad­di­tion to the team al­ready be­ing with­out the key trio of spik­er Ki­une Fletch­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Cheyenne Chin Choy and Nya Steele of Mer­cer Uni­ver­si­ty due to oth­er com­mit­ments.

How­ev­er, af­ter the en­tire con­tin­gent was pro­vid­ed with their re­spec­tive board­ing pass­es, the pair for Alex­is and Small were then de­barred from board­ing the flights due to the fact they were both un­vac­ci­nat­ed against the coro­n­avirus.

Ac­cord­ing to Stew­art, the play­ers be­ing de­nied en­try on­to the flights stems from a re­cent Gazzetted law by the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana which on­ly came in­to ef­fect on Au­gust 8, and which they were not aware of or pro­vid­ed any in­for­ma­tion to.

Ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle writ­ten in the news­room.gy web­site, the up­dat­ed trav­el ad­vi­so­ry, which took ef­fect on Au­gust 8 notes that trav­ellers seek­ing to en­ter Guyana will on­ly be re­quired to have been in­oc­u­lat­ed with a sin­gle dose of a COVID-19 vac­cine.

It stip­u­lates that proof of vac­ci­na­tion means a doc­u­ment in­di­cat­ing that the per­son has re­ceived at least one dose of the As­tra-Zeneca, Sput­nik-V, Sino-pharm, Sino­vac, Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na or John­son and John­son vac­cine.

This up­dat­ed reg­u­la­tion adds to those mea­sures for air­ports and air­craft that man­date pas­sen­gers take oth­er pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures in light of the pub­lic health pan­dem­ic.

Mean­while, in Ju­ly, a gazetted reg­u­la­tion made un­der the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Act stat­ed that na­tion­als of T&T, specif­i­cal­ly, are re­quired to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore they will be al­lowed to trav­el to Guyana.

Then, the News Room was re­li­ably in­formed that this new reg­u­la­tion is meant specif­i­cal­ly for na­tion­als of T&T and not for those who may stop in the Caribbean coun­try due to an in-tran­sit flight.

En­try in­to Guyana al­so re­quires a poly­merase chain re­ac­tion (PCR) COVID-19 test tak­en 72 hours be­fore ar­rival.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Alex­is who at­tends uni­ver­si­ty in the USA left to re­turn to her US school lat­er in the week where she will be vac­ci­nat­ed while the re­main­ing five play­ers were joined by the USA-based trio of Natas­sia Bap­tiste, Afiya Alexan­der and Des­tiny Leon to bring the T&T com­pli­ment up to eight.

With tour­na­ment rules stat­ing a team must have no less than ten play­ers to com­pete Stew­art said be­cause the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the team be­ing short-hand­ed was deemed as ‘force mar­jue’, and could not be avoid­ed the team was al­lowed to com­pete.

And speak­ing af­ter the loss to Guatemala, Clif­ford said, “We came short­hand­ed with on­ly eight play­ers, we did our best in rep­re­sent­ing our coun­try”

With the T&T gov­ern­ment hav­ing im­ple­ment­ed re­stric­tions of gath­er­ings due to the coro­n­avirus for most of the year thus far, Clif­ford added, “We got to­geth­er on short no­tice, with on­ly two weeks to train to­geth­er, but at the end of it all I am proud of my team and hope­ful­ly we can pre­pare bet­ter for the next tour­na­ment”

T&T Team: Natas­sia Bap­tiste, Afiya Alexan­der, Des­tiny Leon, Rayquelle Dick­son, Shan­ice Cot­toy, Amaris No­ray, De­siree Don­ald, Ja­da Craw­ford.

Tech­ni­cal staff: Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford (coach), Dar­lene Ramdin (as­sis­tant coach).