Nigel Si­mon

T&T se­nior women's vol­ley­ball team will be seek­ing to ex­act some re­venge on Cana­da. Both teams meet in their Group B open­er at the 22nd Norce­ca Women's Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onship in Caguas, Puer­to Ri­co, from 5 pm to­day. The lo­cal 12-mem­ber squad, skip­pered by France-based Krys­tle Es­delle, left here on Fri­day and in­clud­ed first South East Port-of-Spain's Rechez Lind­say on de­but. Es­delle and her team­mates, the reign­ing four-time Caribbean cham­pi­ons, are com­ing off a tenth-place show­ing at the 12-team Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Mex­i­co in Ju­ly where they were beat­en by the Cana­di­ans, 15-25, 17-25, 17-25 in their sev­enth to tenth place semi­fi­nal and will be keen for re­demp­tion.

In ad­di­tion to Es­delle, there are two oth­er Eu­ro­pean-based play­ers in the squad in Poland-based 17-year-olds, Chan­non Thomp­son and Sinead Jack.Oth­er no­table play­ers in the 29th world ranked T&T squad coached by Cuban, Fran­cis­co "Panchee" Cruz are vice-cap­tain Kel­ly-Anne Billingy, Shurvette Beck­les, Rheeza Grant, De­lana Mitchell and Abi­gail Gloud. Fol­low­ing to­day's meet­ing with the world 20th ranked Cana­da, which has won two sil­ver and eight bronze medals in the tour­na­ment's his­to­ry, T&T will al­so meet five-time win­ner and world sec­ond ranked USA two days lat­er.

The Amer­i­cans have al­so fin­ished sec­ond 11 times and third on three oc­ca­sions, to be among the tour­na­ment favourites and al­so de­feat­ed T&T 25-11, 25-17, 25-18 in their group meet­ing. Group A com­pris­es 2009 run­ner-up Puer­to Ri­co (#17), Cos­ta Ri­ca (#22) and two-time cham­pi­ons Mex­i­co (#27) while de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (#13), 13-time win­ners Cu­ba (#8) and Pana­ma (#55) are in Group C

One again, Cu­ba, which has al­ways fin­ished among the top-three in the 21 pre­vi­ous con­tests with two sec­ond-places and one bronze medal fin­ish will start as tour­na­ment favourites. The Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, who meet Pana­ma in to­day's open­er from 3 pm al­so have five bronze medals while Mex­i­co has cap­tured three bronzes. Host Puer­to Ri­co face off against Cos­ta Ri­ca to close out to­day's match­es at 8 pm. The win­ner of the tour­na­ment will earn a tick­et to the FIVB World Cup in Japan next No­vem­ber.