T&T se­nior men and women beach vol­ley­ballers quest for a next year's resched­uled Tokyo Olympic Games has been put on hold un­til next year.

This af­ter the NORCE­CA Beach Com­mis­sion took a de­ci­sion on Thurs­day to post­poned its en­tire 2020 Beach Vol­ley­ball sea­son due to the on­go­ing glob­al coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which has af­fect­ed sport in every as­pect.

The top-ranked Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­try among the NORCE­CA beach vol­ley­ball play­ing na­tions, T&T was due to rep­re­sent the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) along with US Vir­gin Is­lands in both men and women com­pe­ti­tions at the NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball In­ter-Zon­al Con­ti­nen­tal Cup in Nicaragua which was card­ed for March, 19 to 23.

The oth­er coun­tries list­ed to com­pete both in the men and women gen­ders in the In­ter­Zon­al Con­ti­nen­tal Cup, the semi­fi­nal round of NORCE­CA Olympic qual­i­fiers are East­ern Caribbean Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EC­VA) na­tions, St Kitts & Nevis, and St Lu­cia and host Nicaragua.

Guatemala qual­i­fied to com­pete in the men’s part of the qual­i­fiers as the sec­ond team from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca while Cos­ta Ri­ca qual­i­fied among the women to the six-team qual­i­fiers from which three men and four women teams are ex­pect­ed to ad­vance to the NORCE­CA Fi­nal Round qual­i­fiers.

In the men’s Fi­nal Round, Cana­da will be rep­re­sent­ed by one team with the oth­er al­ready qual­i­fied to the Tokyo Olympics along­side neigh­bours USA (two teams) while Mex­i­co, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Cu­ba com­plete the six na­tions.

And in the women’s Fi­nal Round, both Cana­da and USA have qual­i­fied their two teams to Tokyo leav­ing the way for Mex­i­co and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic along with the four qual­i­fiers from the semi­fi­nal round to bat­tle for the oth­er spot.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the meet­ing chaired NORCE­CA Pres­i­dent, Cristo­bal Marte Hof­fiz, Pres­i­dent of the NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball Com­mis­sion, Cana­da's Ed­uard Dra­kich, T&T's Daymi­an Stew­art, a NORCE­CA Beach Vol­ley­ball Com­mis­sion se­nior mem­ber and Mush­taque Mo­hammed, Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA), a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion was tak­ing to can­cel the en­tire NORCE­CA Tour for the re­main­der 2020 as well as post­pon­ing Con­ti­nen­tal Cup Olympic qual­i­fiers.

Ac­cord­ing to a NORCE­CA ear­li­er the FIVB is in con­tact with the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) about po­ten­tial­ly re­vis­ing the beach vol­ley­ball qual­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and any po­ten­tial changes will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to all the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers at a lat­er stage.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment Stew­art said that the T&TVF has a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty where the goal post has been shift­ed back­wards giv­en us more time to pre­pare our­selves for a shot at the Olympics.

He added, "We have time now to en­sure that all our play­ers are ready and we have more play­ers now avail­able to us, in­clu­sive of those re­turn­ing from in­juries and oth­ers from mat­ters that would have made them un­avail­able be­fore.

Stew­art added that NORCE­CA al­so ap­proved an an­nu­al Youth Cham­pi­onship for ath­letes up to 20 years-old that will qual­i­fy teams to Un­der-19 and Un­der-21 FIVB World Cham­pi­onship and Youth Pan Amer­i­can Games.

With re­gards to the 2021 NORCE­CA Tour, Stew­ard said, "Next year's tour will be of great in­cen­tive to par­tic­i­pat­ing teams and coun­tries with for the least the top four na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions in each gen­der qual­i­fy­ing to the Se­nior FIV World Cham­pi­onship card­ed for Rome, Italy in 2022.

He added, "The NORCE­CA Youth Cham­pi­onships will qual­i­fies teams to the ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al events, but for the Youth Olympics, NORCE­CA has six spots avail­able for qual­i­fi­ca­tion, and the high­est team in each zone will qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly along with the next two high­est-ranked teams.

"So it's ex­cit­ing times com­ing out of a dif­fi­cult Covid-19 sit­u­a­tion for NORCE­CA, CA­ZO­VA and the T&TVF and we on­ly have good things to look for­ward too."

"Some of the de­ci­sions made by NORCE­CA to­day (yes­ter­day) are im­por­tant for us and gives us the chance to put things in place so that we can cap­i­talise.

Con­cern­ing the lo­cal teams' chances of at­tain­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion to these ma­jor events, Stew­art said he was very op­ti­mistic.

"At present, the T&TVF has a pool of very good young play­ers who will al­so have a chance to go to the first NORCE­CA Youth Cham­pi­onship and put them­selves in a po­si­tion to qual­i­fy the un­der-age teams to the Youth Olympics, Youth Pan Amer­i­can Games and FIVB Un­der-19 and Un­der-21 Cham­pi­onships," stat­ed Stew­art.