Volleyball women win NORCECA qualifying tourney
TRINIDAD and Tobago expectedly claimed the gold medal Sunday night in the second leg NORCECA (North, Central America and the Caribbean) qualifying tournament for World Women’s Volleyball Championships at the Sports & Physical Education Centre (SPEC) of the St Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies.
Despite the fact that they were not at their best and ended up losing their only set in the tournament, the hosts defeated fellow Caribbean powerhouses Barbados 25-18, 20-25, 25-17, 25-20 in the final.
Both teams had already advanced to the penultimate stage of NORCECA qualifying early next year for the World Championships, which will be staged in Italy late in the year.
T&T crushed the Bajans in less than an hour in the very first match of the tournament in the round-robin phase the morning before, but this victory took 87 minutes.
Krystle Esdelle was the first to admit that the four-time defending Caribbean champions struggled when the captain stated: “Tonight our key players did not perform and we made too many errors.”
Still the left-hander, the Most Valuable Player when T&T captured the gold medal in their group in the first leg of qualifying last year in Suriname, pounded 18 kills and two aces to be the game’s leading scorer with 20 points.
Esdelle’s fellow Poland-based players Channon Thompson and Sinead Jack were this country’s others to reach doubles figures, contributing 19 (13 kills, five aces) and ten, respectively.
For Barbados, veteran captain Shari Matthews, who is based in Serbia, had 24 kills and 14 points all told, one more than the Spain-based Anicia Wood.
Just before the final, Honduras picked up the bronze medal by beating Anguilla 25-9, 25-18, 25-18 in just over an hour, the day after also whipping them in straight sets in the round-robin phase.
The Barbadians had beaten both Honduras and Anguilla in straight sets in the group phase and T&T were undefeated in their four matches over the weekend.
T&T were represented by Esdelle, Jack, Thompson, United States-based Samantha Prescott, Finland-based former national junior captain Darlene Ramdin as well as Abby Blackman, Countnee-Mae Clifford, Renele Forde, Abigail Gloud, Andrea Kinsale, Rechez Lindsay and Kelly Billingy, one of the leading players in the Caribbean for over a decade.
The five-time Caribbean champs were eliminated in the third and penultimate round of NORCECA qualifying for the previous World Championships, the 2010 edition in Japan.