Nigel Si­mon

This coun­try's Un­der-21 women's vol­ley­ball team will be on a mis­sion to re­claim their top billing as queens of the re­gion when they leave on Sun­day for Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos to con­test the tenth Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships.

The sev­en-team tour­na­ment will see the T&T young women com­pete in Pool D with long-time ri­vals and host Bar­ba­dos and Haiti while de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Mar­tinique, Guade­loupe, US Vir­gin Is­lands and Cu­ra­cao are in Pool C, for the one-week tour­na­ment to be con­test­ed from De­cem­ber 7 to 13 at the Sir Garfield Sobers Gym­na­si­um, Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

Two years ago, in Mar­tinique, T&T un­der the guid­ance of coach Mac­sood Ali went in search of an un­prece­dent­ed sev­enth ti­tle hav­ing won pre­vi­ous­ly in 1997, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2011/2012.

How­ev­er, the T&T out­fit had to set­tle for the sil­ver medals be­hind the host, a sec­ond sil­ver medal fin­ish af­ter a sim­i­lar out­come in 2009 be­hind then host Guade­loupe.

But fol­low­ing an in­tense train­ing pro­gram and con­tin­ue play in the on-go­ing T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion Su­per League Women's Di­vi­sion, as­sis­tant coach and for­mer na­tion­al women's libero, Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford says the team was on a mis­sion to take the gold medal.

Clif­ford who will serve as as­sis­tant to for­mer Cu­ba Olympic women's gold medal­ist Idalmis Gato Moya added, "Our fo­cus since we be­gan train­ing in on go­ing for the gold medal and over the past few months we have worked dili­gent­ly.

This year's team com­pris­es on­ly two re­turn­ing from the 2013 squad in cap­tain Nico­lette De Mille and Aaliyah Alex­is and Clif­ford was quick to note that based on their ex­pe­ri­ence gained in the Su­per League, it au­gurs well for the team.

The T&T as­sis­tant coach stat­ed: "Some of the girls are new to this lev­el but we be­lieve that we have a per­fect mix­ture of ex­pe­ri­ence and coura­geous hearts filled with de­ter­mi­na­tion to be suc­cess­ful at this tour­na­ment.

"We will be tak­ing it match by match, with the aim of win­ning the group and ad­vanc­ing straight to the semi­fi­nals, and from there we will con­tin­ue to work to­wards the our main tar­get of win­ning gold," end­ed Clif­ford.

With on­ly three team in its pool, T&T which faces Haiti in its open­er on Wednes­day De­cem­ber 9 from 4 pm fol­lowed by Bar­ba­dos a day lat­er at 6pm, is cer­tain of a quar­ter­fi­nal spot for the least as the top three teams in each group ad­vance.

T&T Ju­nior Women vol­ley­ball team: Nico­lette De Mille (cap­tain), Am­ber Com­mis­siong (vice-cap­tain), Des­tiny Leon, Aaliyah Alex­is, Gabriel­la Su­per­sad, Ani­ka Bus­by, Anyi­ka Joseph

Brit­ney Choon, Tysan Selvon, Cheyenne Chin Choy, Lat­i­fah Gon­za­les, Kait­lyn Mitchell

Tech­ni­cal staff: Idalmis Gato Moya (coach), Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford (as­sis­tant coach), Nichol­son Drakes (train­er), Kam­la El­cock (man­ag­er)

Ju­nior Women's Vol­ley­ball Tour­na­ment fix­tures:

De­cem­ber 7:

Mar­tinique vs Cu­ra­cao, 4 pm

Guade­loupe vs US Vir­gin Is­lands, 6 pm

De­cem­ber 8:

Cu­ra­cao vs US Vir­gin Is­lands, 4 pm

Mar­tinique vs Guade­loupe, 6 pm

De­cem­ber 9:

Guade­loupe vs Cu­ra­cao, 12 noon

US Vir­gin Is­lands vs Mar­tinique, 2 pm

T&T vs Haiti, 4 pm

De­cem­ber 10:

Bar­ba­dos vs T&T, 6 pm

De­cem­ber 11:

Quar­ter­fi­nals:

Sec­ond Group A vs Third Group B, 2 pm

Sec­ond Group B vs Third Group A, 4 pm

De­cem­ber 12:

Semi­fi­nals: 2 pm -10 pm

De­cem­ber 13:

Bronze, 12 noon

Fi­nal, 6 pm