Host T&T over­came a de­ter­mined Bar­ba­dos 3-1 (25-18, 20-25, 25-17, 25-20 to claim the gold medal in their NORCE­CA Women's Sec­ond Round Group I qual­i­fi­er to the 2014 FIVB World Cham­pi­onship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine, on Sun­day night.

Go­ing in­to the match, both teams had al­ready se­cured their pas­sage to the Third Round of NORCE­CA qual­i­fi­ca­tion af­ter end­ing the round-robin se­ries as the top two teams, and de­spite a much im­proved show­ing from the Bar­ba­di­ans, than in their first meet­ing, the more ath­let­ic Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers pre­vailed in one hours and 27 min­utes, to fin­ish the tour­na­ment un­beat­en.

Lead­ing the way for the host, ranked sev­enth in NORCE­CA was cap­tain Krys­tle Es­delle with 20 points, 18 of which were kills and two aces while Chan­non Thomp­son added a valu­able 19, in­clu­sive of 13 kills and five ser­vice aces, and Sinead Jack, 10.

For Bar­ba­dos, Ser­bia-based cap­tain, Shari Matthews was al­so her team's top­scor­er with 14 points, punc­tu­at­ed by 13 kills while Spain-based Ani­cia Wood chipped in with 13.

Speak­ing af­ter the match, Matthews first ad­mit­ted it was the best per­for­mance by her team over the two days of the tour­na­ment.

"We start­ed off very slow on the first day but in the fi­nal it was ev­i­dent that we made a big im­prove­ment, but still came up short," end­ed Matthews.

Es­delle, while hap­py her team won the gold medal was dis­ap­point­ed in the ac­tu­al per­for­mance in the fi­nal.

She added, "Tonight, our key play­ers did not per­form and we made too many er­rors which made the match com­pli­cat­ed for us."

An­drew Brath­waite, the Bar­ba­di­an coach was sat­is­fied with his team's dis­play as it was much bet­ter than their pre­vi­ous match­es.

"I ex­pect­ed T&T to play at a much high­er lev­el tonight, but for some rea­son they did not, which was good for us and al­so for the spec­ta­tors be­cause it made for an en­ter­tain­ing match for the spec­ta­tors."

T&T coach, Fran­cis­co Cruz was full of praise for Bar­ba­dos, who he said made his team work very hard for the win.

With re­spect to his own team Cruz said he was very sat­is­fied with the out­come be­cause at the mo­ment he can­not de­mand much more.

T&T Vol­ley­ball team goes un­de­feat­ed

Hon­duras spike­sAn­guil­la for­Group I bronze

Cap­tain Tes­sa Michelle Flo­res led from the front with a match-high 10 points to lead Hon­duras over An­guil­la, 25-9, 25-18, 25-18 in their third spot play­off al­so in St Au­gus­tine.

In ad­di­tion to Flo­res, who had sev­en kills in her tal­ly, Mari­a­josse Di­az and Dar­i­ana Flo­res added eight points each in the 64 min­utes win for the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans who dom­i­nat­ed, 24-15 on spikes, 5-0 on blocks and 15-3 on ser­vice aces.

For An­guil­la, cap­tain Su­san Web­ster had eight points and Rikiesha Lev­eret, five in the loss.

It was the sec­ond win in as many meet­ings for the 18th NORCE­CA ranked Hon­durans over An­guil­la, ranked 22nd, af­ter reg­is­ter­ing a 25-15, 25-12, 25-11 win in their round-robin en­counter on Sat­ur­day's open­ing day of the tour­na­ment.

By fin­ish­ing third, Hon­duras, still has a chance to qual­i­fy for Italy, but will on­ly do so, as the best ranked third placed team of all the six Sec­ond Round qual­i­fy­ing groups based on the NORCE­CA rank­ing on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014.

T&T's Thomp­son vot­ed Group I MVP

T&T's Chan­non Thomp­son was vot­ed as the Most Valu­able Play­er at the end of the two-day qual­i­fiers on Sun­day night.

In ad­di­tion, 19-year-old Thomp­son, who played pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Poland for the last three years al­so col­lect­ed three oth­er awards, Best Scor­er, Best Spik­er, and Best Spik­er as the host team dom­i­nat­ed the awards, claim­ing eight of the nine on of­fer.

The oth­er T&T award win­ners on the night were an­oth­er Poland-based play­er Sinead Jack Best Block­er, and Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford, who walked away with three awards, the Best Libero, Best Re­ceiv­er and Best Dig­ger while Hon­duras' Maria Ele­na Bara­hona copped the Best Set­ter ac­co­lade to de­ny T&T, a clean sweep.

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Ho­n­our Roll

In­di­vid­ual awards

Best Scor­er: Chan­non Thomp­son (T&T)

Best Spik­er: Chan­non Thomp­son (T&T)

Best Block­er: Sinead Jack (T&T)

Best Serv­er: Chan­non Thomp­son (T&T)

Best Dig­ger: Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford (T&T)

Best Set­ter: Maria Ele­na Bara­hona (Hon­duras)

Best Re­ceivers: Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford (T&T)

Best Libero: Court­nee-Mae Clif­ford (T&T)

Most Valu­able Play­er: Chan­non Thomp­son (T&T)?