T&T senior women’s volleyballers will meet Costa Rica from 11 am on Sunday in the play-off for the seventh spot in the eight-team NORCECA Women’s Continental Cup at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This follows T&T's 18-25, 20-25, 9-25 loss to Mexico in the fifth to eight semifinals at the same venue on Saturday.
Captain Kiune Fletcher led the scoring for T&T in their best offensive showing so far in four matches with seven points, and La Teisha Joseph added six, while Danielle Noel got five, and Afiya Alexander, four.
The duo of Johanna Belmar and Shernice De Four also scored two points each for the youthful and inexperienced T&T team which was outscored 18-36 on spikes, 2-5 on blocks and 6-11 on service aces while capitalising on 21 errors from Cuba.
Claudia Alarcon was the match top-scorer with 16 points for Cuba which will face Mexico in the fifth-place match from 1 pm today after the latter dismissed Costa Rica 25-14, 25-11, 25-17 in the first fifth to eight semifinals.
In the round-robin phase, eight-time Caribbean champions, T&T, ended at the bottom of Pool B with a 0-3 record after straight-sets defeats against the USA, ranked second in the world, tenth-ranked Dominican Republic, and 21st ranked Mexico.
On Friday night night, Canada reached semifinals and claimed a spot to the NORCECA Olympic qualifier defeating Mexico 25-20, 29-31, 25-17, 25-20 and was scheduled to battled the USA in the semifinals last night, while the Dominican Republic beat Cuba 25-18, 25-11, 25-20 to face Puerto Rico in the other semifinals, dubbed the "Caribbean Classic".
Both Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico have qualified for the NORCECA final four Olympic qualifying tournament to be held next January in the Dominican Republic.
The Americans and Puerto Rico both qualified for the semifinals after winning their respective pools with perfect 3-0 records.
On Thursday night, Puerto Rico advanced to the semifinals after the team swept Canada 25-23, 25-22, 25-18 and also sealed their ticket to the NORCECA Olympic Qualifier in January to battle for the Olympic qualification at the NORCECA final four.
On Saturday, T&T and Costa Rica as the cellar-placed finishers in their pools had the day off.
Speaking after T&T's straight-sets loss to Mexico on Thursday night, 14-25, 7-25, 10-25, Shernice De Four, an outside hitter admitted her team could have played much better especially on defence.
"Being a short team we could have played more defence and get a lot more passes. We have the technique and skill, but we just couldn’t maximize on it; we had many ups and downs”.
Team coach Sean Morrison said, "Calypso Spikers" women's team said, "In my opinion, we did better. We are a young team and Mexico is very experienced. We need to fight more and when we preserve the reception we perform well. We must play more at this level so we can be more competitive in about two years. We must work.”