Nigel Si­mon

T&T se­nior men's vol­ley­ball team will play for fifth spot at the Men's Norce­ca Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onship in Mayaguez, Puer­to Ri­co to­day against Mex­i­co/Cos­ta Ri­ca from 4pm to­day. This is af­ter the 'Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers', the reign­ing Caribbean cham­pi­ons re­bound­ed from its quar­ter­fi­nal loss to Puer­to Ri­co on Thurs­day night to sweep past re­gion­al ri­vals, St Lu­cia 25-20, 25-21, 25-17 in 63 min­utes, in the first of yes­ter­day's fifth to eight place semi­fi­nal play­off en­coun­ters. Lead­ing the way for T&T was skip­per Nolan Tash with 13 points while Si­mon Blake added 11, Jes­sel Davis sev­en and Sean Mor­ri­son, six points. For St Lu­cia, its cap­tain Ja­son Oc­tave had 11 points, and Amo­bi Arm­strong, nine in the loss as it awaits the los­er of the Mex­i­co and St Lu­cia clash for its sev­enth spot play­off to­day from 2 pm.

On Thurs­day night, T&T mi­nus mid­dle-block­er, Brazil-based Marc-An­tho­ny Hon­ore was hum­bled 25-17, 25-15, 25-19 by host Puer­to Ri­co in the sec­ond quar­ter­fi­nal on Thurs­day night. The lanky Hon­ore's T&T top scor­er with 21 points the night be­fore in a 3-0 win over Cos­ta Ri­ca which earned his team a quar­ter­fi­nal spot had to re­turn home for per­son­al rea­sons which seemed to af­fect the Nolan Tash-led T&T squad.

For the host, cap­tain Vic­tor Rivera top­scored with 15 points while Pedri­to Sier­ra had eight, En­rique Es­calante sev­en, and three oth­er play­ers six points each. Tash had a team-high eight for T&T, Jes­sel Davis added sev­en and Sean Mor­ri­son, five in the loss. In the oth­er quar­ter­fi­nal, Cu­ba ad­vanced to the semi­fi­nals af­ter a straight sets win over Mex­i­co, 25-10, 25-23, 25-14 at "Pala­cio de los De­portes".

It was a suc­cess­ful match for Cubans who lacked con­cen­tra­tion at times but out­num­bered Mex­i­co 6-0 in blocks and 10-0 in aces. Hen­ry Bell was Cu­ba's best per­former with 17 points, Fer­nan­do Her­nan­dez con­tributed with 11 and Wil­fre­do Leon chipped in with ten. Samuel Cor­do­va scored eight points for Mex­i­co and Ger­ar­do Con­tr­eras added sev­en. In the main draw semi­fi­nal al­so con­test­ed last night, Cana­da which qual­i­fied for the semi­fi­nal au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as Pool A win­ners with a 3-0 record came up against 14-time win­ners' Cu­ba while sev­en-time cham­pi­on, USA which topped Pool A faced Puer­to Ri­co ahead of to­day's fi­nals and oth­er play­off match­es in the tour­na­ment which is a qual­i­fy­ing event to the FIVB Vol­ley­ball World Cup. The win­ner to the FIVB Vol­ley­ball World Cup to take place in Japan in No­vem­ber, the first step in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for the Lon­don 2012 Olympic Games.