T&T women’s vol­ley­baller Des­tiny Leon and her Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes had their cam­paign in the in­au­gur­al Mex­i­co Pro­fes­sion­al Vol­ley­ball League (LVP MX) sus­pend­ed due to the vi­o­lent events in the state of Guadala­jara on Sun­day.

This was af­ter the Jalis­co New Gen­er­a­tion (CJNG) drug car­tel—one of the coun­try’s most pow­er­ful and feared crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions—en­gaged in gun shootouts with the Mex­i­can mil­i­tary, blocked roads and burnt ve­hi­cles in re­sponse to the killing of its leader Neme­sio Os­eguera Cer­vantes, bet­ter known as ‘El Men­cho’, in an army op­er­a­tion.

Vi­o­lence be­gan in the cen­tral-west­ern Jalis­co state – where a code red se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion has been de­clared – and has now spread to at least a dozen more re­gions, with videos post­ed on­line show­ing gun­men pa­trolling streets and smoke bil­low­ing over cities.

Fol­low­ing the out­break of the vi­o­lent events in var­i­ous en­ti­ties of the coun­try, the Pro­fes­sion­al Vol­ley­ball League of Mex­i­co sus­pend­ed Sun­day’s match­es, in­clud­ing the match be­tween Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes and Fre­seras de Ira­pu­a­to at the Po­lifo­rum More­los of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sports and Cul­ture.

How­ev­er, af­ter the events that oc­curred in Jalis­co, it was de­cid­ed to can­cel the ac­tiv­i­ty in the three planned venues: Guadala­jara, León and Aguas­calientes.

So far, the new date or time for the resched­uled match has not been an­nounced. It is ex­pect­ed that in the next few hours the league will in­form us when the sec­ond game of the se­ries will be played, in which the Gi­ants will try to add their sixth con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ry in the LVP MX.

Last Fri­day, in their first match of the week­end se­ries, Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes de­feat­ed cel­lar-placed Fre­seras 25-21, 25-18, 24-26, 25-22, led by 23 points from Abi­gail Nua, while Rachel Brown and Leslie Lopez added 15 each, and Leon six.

Pri­or to that win, Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes had wins over sec­ond-from-bot­tom Leonas 25-22, 25-21, 24-26, 25-21 with Leon scor­ing 11 points, and 25-23, 25-20, 25-23 with the T&T play­er tal­ly­ing 11 points as well.

Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes al­so reg­is­tered a sweep of Guer­reras de Puebla, first­ly earn­ing a 25-23, 20-25, 22-25, 27-25, 15-8 win with Leon get­ting 14 points as one of four play­ers in dou­ble fig­ures for the win­ners, and then eight points in their 25-20, 25-23, 25-22 vic­to­ry.

With the five-match win­ning streak, Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes now sits third on the six-club stand­ings with a 7-4 win-loss record and 20 points, one point be­hind sec­ond-placed Tap­a­tias (7-4) and 13 adrift of their next op­po­nent and ta­ble lead­ers, Coro­nelas de Du­ran­go (11-0), who have 32 points.

Guer­reras de Puebla is fourth with a 5-6 record and 18 points, while Leonas is fifth with a 3-8 mark and eight points.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the se­ries against Fre­seras, Gi­gantes de Aguas­calientes will con­clude their sched­ule against Coro­nelas de Du­ran­go, Tap­a­tias, Guer­reras de Pueble and Leonas at the end of March.

At the con­clu­sion of this phase, the top four teams in the stand­ings will ad­vance to the semi­fi­nals.

Both the semi­fi­nals and the fi­nal will be played in home-and-away se­ries, best of three match­es, with the high­er-ranked team host­ing the de­ci­sive games.

If a third match is re­quired, it will be played the fol­low­ing day at the same venue.