T&T se­nior men’s vol­ley­baller Daynte Stew­art of Orkulljun­ga Vol­ley was named to the Swe­den Elit­se­rien Men’s Vol­ley­ball League “Team of the Year”, which com­pris­es six play­ers.

This was af­ter 25-year-old Stew­art, who plays as an out­side hit­ter, led his team to a fifth-place league fin­ish with a 13-7 win-loss record on the 11-team ta­ble and a spot in the na­tion­al play­offs, which serve off on Sun­day, March 15.

In their fi­nal league out­ing on Fri­day last at Orkelljun­ga Fo­rum, Orkelljun­ga de­feat­ed Lund 19-25, 25-12, 25-10, and 25-22, with Tyler Nix fir­ing down 22 points, Stew­art 20 (14 spikes, four blocks and two aces), and Josi­ah Grif­fiths 15 for the win­ners, while Prze­mys­law Smere­ka had 18 and Si­mon Alexan­der­s­son eight to lead Lund.

The five oth­er play­ers named to the “Team of the Year” were Bo­hdan Mazenko (Hylte/Halm­stad), Hannes Si­mon­s­son (Habo Wol­ley), Shawn Og­bei­de (Sol­len­tu­na) and the Flo­by duo, Hugo Walthers­son and Toms Vanags.

A for­mer T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion (T&TVF) ‘Play­er of the Year’ award re­cip­i­ent, Stew­art, who en­joyed a stel­lar ca­reer on the US col­le­giate cir­cuit at the In­di­ana In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, led Orkulljun­ga with 302 points, the fourth best over­all in the league at 4.14 points per set, which ranked tenth, and was high­light­ed by 30 ser­vice aces, which ranked sec­ond amongst all play­ers.

On the de­fen­sive end, Stew­art, who was award­ed the “Best Scor­er” ac­co­lade at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in 2023, tal­lied 32 blocks, all while se­cur­ing six “Most Valu­able Play­er” of the match awards.

Win­ners of three of the past four ti­tles, Hylte/Halm­stad will en­ter the play­offs as tour­na­ment favourites, hav­ing topped the round-robin league phase with an 18-2 record and 55 points, eight clear of Habo (16-4), while de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Flo­by VK (15-5) were third with 45 points, one more than Sol­len­tu­na (16-4), while Soder­talge (10-10) end­ed in the sixth spot with 30 points, fol­lowed by Lund (9-11) with 29 and Vin­gaak­er, in the eighth and fi­nal play­off spot with a 7-15 record and 21 points.

In the best-of-three quar­ter­fi­nal play­offs, four-time league win­ners (1998/99, 2000/01, 2002/03, 2003/04) Orkelljun­ga faces Sol­len­tu­na with their reg­u­lar-sea­son meet­ings end­ing in sim­i­lar 3-1 wins for each team, while Lunds plays Hylte/Halm­stad, and Sodertelge meets Habo. The play­offs will be­gin on Sat­ur­day when Vin­gak­er tack­les Flo­by.