This coun­try's se­nior women's vol­ley­ball team prepa­ra­tions for the host­ing of the North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Vol­ley­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (NORCE­CA) Fourth Round Qual­i­fiers to the FIVB World Cham­pi­onship, has suf­fered a ma­jor blow with the res­ig­na­tion of Cuban-born head coach, Fran­cis­co "Panchee" Cruz.This was re­vealed in the press re­lease is­sued by the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion and signed by its pres­i­dent Daymi­an Stew­art on Thurs­day.It stat­ed: "Vol­ley­ball coach Fran­cis­co Cruz, who was in the midst of his ninth year as the na­tion­al coach de­cid­ed to call it a day cit­ing dif­fi­cul­ties with se­cur­ing train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and med­ical sup­port for the ath­letes."

Reached for com­ment on his de­ci­sion to va­cate his po­si­tion, Cruz was quick to note that since ar­riv­ing in T&T to coach the team has been work­ing un­der very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions with re­gards to get­ting fa­cil­i­ties avail­able to pre­pare teams, as well as sup­port for the play­ers when in­jured as well as hav­ing the prop­er per­son­nel trav­el with the team in­clu­sive of phys­io­ther­a­pist and doc­tors.De­spite all these prob­lems, Cruz was able to guide the team to four straight Se­nior Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Cham­pi­onship ti­tles on the trot as well as an im­prove world rank­ing of 31st from 93rd, a fourth placed fin­ish at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games (CAC) and a sev­enth rank­ing in NORCE­CA.

How­ev­er, Cruz's main goal was to qual­i­fy the team to the FIVB World Cham­pi­onship card­ed for Italy in Sep­tem­ber af­ter fail­ing to do so four years ago at the fi­nal hur­dle.Four years on, and Cruz and the se­nior women's team found them­selves back in the fa­mil­iar po­si­tion of a chance at Italy, with on­ly Mex­i­co, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Nicaragua and Pana­ma stand­ing in their way in the five-team round-robin tour­na­ment which is ex­pect­ed to take place at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine from Ju­ly 16-20.At the end of the five-team round-robin tour­na­ment, the top team will join the 23-al­ready qual­i­fied teams in Italy.But with the tour­na­ment less than two weeks and a chance at his­to­ry with­in his grasp, Cruz has de­cid­ed he will not work un­der the try­ing con­di­tions he has had to put up with for most of his coach­ing ca­reer in T&T.

He ex­plained: "For in­stance our na­tion­al women's team re­cent­ly re­turned from the Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Mex­i­co, where our set­ter Renele Forde picked up a se­ri­ous in­jury and be­cause we had no med­ical per­son­nel on our tech­ni­cal staff we had to use the as­sis­tance of med­ical per­sons from oth­er teams."Up­on our re­turn home I had dis­cus­sions with of­fi­cials of the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion and once again ex­plained to them of the many prob­lems we ex­pe­ri­enced and will con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence, but up to the point be­fore I re­signed I had not got­ten any so­lu­tions.

"So I asked my­self, how do I con­tin­ue like this be­cause at the end of the day, its the coach who has to an­swer when a team per­forms well or not.In the T&TVF re­lease, Stew­art ad­mit­ted that the is­sues are re­al and are the same chal­lenges the fed­er­a­tion and the teams faced in the last eight years."The tim­ing is aw­ful but in dis­cus­sion with the ath­letes, we have placed full con­fi­dence in the long stand­ing un­der­study to Cruz, Nichol­son Drakes to com­plete this im­por­tant jour­ney."The T&TVF has in­vest­ed in Drakes' de­vel­op­ment and stand strong be­hind him, pre­vent­ing a pos­si­ble desta­bil­is­ing sit­u­a­tion.With re­gards to Cruz, Stew­art said he was ad­vised by many to talk to Cruz but he chose not to.Stew­art who is in high praise for where Cruz has tak­en the team over the past four years, said he pref­ered to have some­one with the pas­sion for T&T at the helm at this time.The wel­fare and men­tal readi­ness of the ath­letes are the pri­or­i­ty.

"If my ath­letes are ok, I am ok. I be­lieve in them. They asked me to bring this event to Trinidad to give them a chance."