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Thursday, July 24, 2025

T&T vball women finish 8th

by

Nigel Simon - Snr. Sports Reporter
2109 days ago
20191014
T&T senior women’s volleyballers ended in the cellar-spot after losing to Costa Rica 19-25, 21-25, 19-25 in their play-off for the seventh spot at the  NORCECA Women’s Continental Cup at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, yesterday.

T&T senior women’s volleyballers ended in the cellar-spot after losing to Costa Rica 19-25, 21-25, 19-25 in their play-off for the seventh spot at the NORCECA Women’s Continental Cup at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, yesterday.

Nigel Simon

T&T se­nior women’s vol­ley­ballers end­ed in the cel­lar-spot af­ter los­ing to Cos­ta Ri­ca 19-25, 21-25, 19-25 in their play-off for the sev­enth spot at the NORCE­CA Women’s Con­ti­nen­tal Cup at Rober­to Clemente Col­i­se­um in San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co, on Mon­day.

With the win, Cos­ta Ri­ca fin­ished with 1-4 record while the Ki­une Fletch­er-cap­tained youth­ful T&T team end­ed with­out a win af­ter five at­tempts to sit in the eighth po­si­tion.

De­spite the loss, the team coached by Sean Mor­ri­son had its best over­all per­for­mance against their more ex­pe­ri­enced op­po­nents and it was ev­i­dent, by the team's sets points dif­fer­en­tial through­out the com­pe­ti­tion.

The T&T women even ral­lied from 11-18 down in the third set and won five points in a row to bring the score to with­in two points (16-18), but the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans kept their com­po­sure and swept to vic­to­ry.

Over­all, the Cos­ta Ri­cans led 33-26 in kills, 6-3 in blocks and held a slim 11-10 mar­gin in aces while al­low­ing 20 points in er­rors and scor­ing 25 op­po­nent er­rors.

For the win­ners, Tama­ra Es­pinoza topped all scor­ers with 20 points on 17 kills and three aces while Fletch­er led T&T with 17 points and Afiya Alexan­der added nine.

Speak­ing af­ter the loss, Mor­ri­son said de­spite the close-set scores it was his team's best show­ing.

Mor­ri­son said, “The last per­for­mance wasn't our best, we played bet­ter against USA, Cu­ba and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and in the eas­i­est match we didn’t. Cos­ta Ri­ca kept its game-plan, the team didn’t let go while we made too many er­rors that caused us to come in the last po­si­tion. We need to learn from our mis­takes to be bet­ter for the fu­ture”.

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 and was then de­feat­ed by Cu­ba in the fifth to eighth place semi­fi­nals.

In the sec­ond match yes­ter­day, Mex­i­co de­feat­ed Cu­ba 25-20, 25-20, 17-25, 25-22 to seal the fifth spot, and with it a spot in the NORCE­CA fi­nal-four 2020 Olympic Qual­i­fiers in Jan­u­ary along­side host Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Puer­to Ri­co and Cana­da .

In the fi­nals, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic was due to clash with the USA while Cana­da got bronze af­ter beat­ing Puer­to Ri­co 26-24, 25-13, 25-20.

The meet­ing be­tween USA and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic will be their fourth ti­tle clash af­ter meet­ing in 2011, 2013, and 2015 fi­nals, all won by the USA, which has al­ready qual­i­fied to the Olympics.


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