T&T’s un­der-21 Women vol­ley­ballers will be­gin their quest in the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Un­der-19 and 21 Cham­pi­onships from 3 pm on Thurs­day af­ter­noon at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Pleas­antville.

Fol­low­ing a two-year ab­sence from sport due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the T&T U-21 team will come face-to-face with the Unit­ed States Vir­gin Is­lands (USVI) where just three teams are slat­ed to com­pete. They will play in a round-robin play-off.

The match will fol­low two oth­er games on the day with match­es from 10 am and 12 noon. The T&T match will pre­cede the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

The CA­ZO­VA teams are com­pet­ing for the right to qual­i­fy for their re­spec­tive NORCE­CA Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onship in 2023, which will serve as qual­i­fiers for their FIVB Age Group Cham­pi­onship.

CA­ZO­VA Pres­i­dent Mush­taque Mo­hammed, who is a for­mer T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent had ex­pressed the view that for CA­ZO­VA, it is eas­i­er to get the youth and ju­nior cat­e­gories go­ing be­cause of team readi­ness. He made it clear the se­nior cat­e­go­ry will be held next year, while the un­der-23s will take place in De­cem­ber.

This year, ac­tion will take place for women and men U-21, as well as for women and men U-19.

Mean­while, un­der-21 women’s coach Gideon Dick­son is hop­ing to make the best of an op­por­tu­ni­ty they did not get for the past two years.

“It’s been ba­si­cal­ly two-and-a-half years for the play­ers to be in­ac­tive and it has been un­for­tu­nate due to the pan­dem­ic,” he said.

“At the same time, for­tu­nate­ly, we had the De­vel­op­ment Fes­ti­val which I be­lieved served its pur­pose to re­sume the sport of vol­ley­ball and pro­vide a base for the na­tion­al teams’ se­lec­tions as we have the tal­ent.”

“We in­tend to go in­to the tour­na­ment and fo­cus on each match as they come as our in­ten­tion is to win the com­pe­ti­tion and even though we had been in­ac­tive for such a long time, we are con­fi­dent of putting our best foot for­ward and do­ing our­selves proud,” Dick­son said.

Peer Nas­seir who coach­es both the T&T’s U-19 and U-21 teams said: “ We have a three-game se­ries with Suri­name be­cause of a lack of teams. The pos­i­tive thing about this is that we have nev­er made it to a fi­nal in this age group be­fore since its in­cep­tion in 2007 when we won bronze and three years lat­er again we got bronze.”

“To be hon­est, Suri­name is prac­ti­cal­ly un­beat­able, but I am hop­ing that with the three-game se­ries, we should be able to scout them, adapt to them and over­come them.

How­ev­er, that will all de­pend on the gap be­tween both teams and if we can close this gap in the short space of time, com­ing out of a pan­dem­ic and not much com­pe­ti­tion or prepa­ra­tion done over any long pe­ri­od of time,” he not­ed.

There were al­so views from USVI U-19 coach Isaac Raphael, say­ing, “ We have been prepar­ing for the past two weeks with train­ing ses­sions twice per day and we are ready as can be.

I’m ex­cit­ed about the po­ten­tial the team has as the play­ers have re­al­ly gelled to­geth­er as a unit and of course, I would like to have more time to pre­pare, but we are here to com­pete and do our best:”

And Claudius Straal, the Suri­name coach, stat­ed that his team be­gan prepar­ing about two months ago with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 play­ers be­fore trim­ming their squad to 12 re­cent­ly for the tour­na­ment.

“Two years ago we were the win­ners of this com­pe­ti­tion at the Un­der-18 lev­el, so we ba­si­cal­ly have a core of play­ers who were part of that win­ning team here with us again.

We want to re­peat as the cham­pi­ons, but first, we have to take it match-by-match and try and fin­ish among the top two teams in the round-robin so we can play in the fi­nal,” he said.