Nigel Si­mon

T&T's "Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers" will be con­fi­dent of re­al­is­ing their dream of com­pet­ing at an FIVB Women's World Cham­pi­onship when they come up against Mex­i­co in a win­ner-take-all North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Vol­ley­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (NORCE­CA) Women's Play­off fi­nal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine from 6 o'clock this evening.Set­ter Kel­ly-Anne Billingy led lo­cal women, ranked 31st in the world, to over­come Cos­ta Ri­ca 25�22, 25�15, 25�21 in their penul­ti­mate match of the five-team tour­na­ment at the same venue on Fri­day night to im­prove to 3�0, while Nicaragua de­feat­ed Pana­ma 25�16, 24�26, 25�10, 25�19 for its first win.

The Mex­i­cans were al­so un­beat­en with a 2�0 record go­ing in­to their en­counter with Nicaragua last night ahead of to­day's high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed meet­ing with host T&T, which they last played at the Pan Amer­i­can in May, los­ing in five sets.T&T women won the first two sets, 25�18, 25�21, but then im­plod­ed the next three sets, 15�20, 20�25, 8�15, how­ev­er, coach Nichol­son Drakes will be hop­ing his team con­tin­ue their win­ning trend.The last time T&T de­feat­ed Mex­i­co was last year at the Pan Amer­i­can Cup in Pe­ru.Lead­ing the way for T&T, the five-time reign­ing Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) cham­pi­ons on Fri­day night, was Ro­ma­nia-based Krys­tle Es­delle with 15 points, punc­tu­at­ed by 14 kills while the in-form France-based Chan­non Thomp­son added 14, in­clu­sive of ten kills and four blocks.

Mid­dle-block­er, Sinead Jack, who plies her trade in Rus­sia, had an­oth­er im­pres­sive out­ing with nine points, high­light­ed by four blocks while Dar­lene Ramdin, who al­so plays pro­fes­sion­al­ly in France added eight.The duo of Jali­cia Ross-Ky­dd and Kel­ly-Anne Billingy chipped in with six points each for T&T which dom­i­nat­ed in all key as­pects of the 83 min­utes con­test, 37�22 on kills, 12�7 on blocks and 9�6 on ser­vice ace.For the Cos­ta Ri­cans who fell to a 1�2 record af­ter los­ing to Mex­i­co as well and will miss out on the World Cham­pi­onship af­ter two straight ap­pear­ances, cap­tain An­gela Willis and Pao­la Ramirez tal­lied nine points each.Ve­ra­nia Willis got sev­en and the pair of Mi­jal Hines and Daniela Var­gas, three each.

Speak­ing af­ter the win, a very fo­cused Billingy, a 14-year vet­er­an of the team and one of eight play­ers who were part of the 2009 squad which missed out on the World event in Japan due to a cel­lar-placed fin­ish in the play­offs, ad­mit­ted it was one of her team's best dis­plays in a while."I think this was prob­a­bly one of the bet­ter games we have played in a very long time as a team and on­ly the sec­ond time we have beat­en Cos­ta Ri­ca in straight sets.Coach Drakes added: "We are mov­ing for­ward to Sun­day (against Mex­i­co) very con­fi­dent. As I said be­fore, I be­lieve my team could win this tour­na­ment, but we need to be fo­cused, we need to con­cen­trate more and be­lieve more."Cos­ta Ri­can coach Ho­ra­cio Bastit said: "T&T took ad­van­tage of the strength they have at the net." Un­for­tu­nate­ly the ob­jec­tive that we had to qual­i­fy for the World Cham­pi­onship is gone. We have to keep our heads up and fin­ish this tour­na­ment."