T&T se­nior women's vol­ley­ball team will hope to serve off their cam­paign at the pres­ti­gious NORCE­CA Women’s Fi­nal Four tour­na­ment against Mex­i­co in the open­ing match at the Juan Aubin Cruz Abreu Col­i­se­um, Ma­n­ati in Puer­to Ri­co Fri­day from 6 pm.

Two hours lat­er, host Puer­to Ri­co be­gins de­fence of its ti­tle it won last year with a clash against Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The T&T women, dubbed the "Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers", were in­vit­ed to com­pete at the tour­na­ment due to the with­draw­al of Cu­ba be­cause of un­ex­pect­ed trav­el com­pli­ca­tions and will then face host Puer­to Ri­co on Sat­ur­day from 8 pm be­fore end­ing their cam­paign against Cos­ta Ri­ca on Sun­day from 5 pm.

T&Ts' best fin­ish in the tour­na­ment was a bronze medal in the 2022 edi­tion be­hind cham­pi­ons Puer­to Ri­co and Cos­ta Ri­ca and this time around un­der the su­per­vi­sion of coach, Day­main Stew­art, who is al­so the pres­i­dent of the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTVF), the team will be us­ing the tour­na­ment as part of their prepa­ra­tions for next month's Se­nior Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Cham­pi­onship (CA­ZO­VA) to be held in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas from Au­gust 14-24.

The T&T team in Puer­to Ri­co in­cludes Des­tiny Leon, Jo­han­na Bel­mar, Ma­li­ka David­son, Kay­lon Cruick­shank, Deli­cia Pierre, and the quar­tet of Un­der-23 play­ers, Ruth St Louis, Alyssa Hutchin­son, Jor­danne Hutchin­son, the re­cip­i­ent of the "Best Re­ceiv­er" at the U-23 CA­ZO­VA Cham­pi­onship, and Sadie Torkar, who were all mem­bers of the bronze medal team at the just con­clud­ed CA­ZO­VA U-23 Cham­pi­onships at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na on Sun­day.

Miss­ing from the T&T squad is L'fe Roberts, cap­tain of the U-23 women's team, who was named "Best Scor­er" of the four-team women's com­pe­ti­tion, cit­ing per­son­al rea­sons for not trav­el­ling with the team to Puer­to Ri­co.

How­ev­er, the par­tic­i­pat­ing teams in Puer­to Ri­co will be award­ed FIVB World Rank­ing points valid for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process to the 2026 FIVB Vol­ley­ball Na­tions League and for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the FIVB World Cham­pi­onship 2027, mean­ing that Stew­art and his team will have an in­cen­tive to play to their max­i­mum.

As the back-to-back reign­ing cham­pi­on, Puer­to Ri­co is one of the top con­tenders aim­ing to de­fend their ti­tle. In the last tour­na­ment held in Puer­to Ri­co, the host team fin­ished first, Mex­i­co sec­ond, and Cu­ba se­cured the third seed.

The com­pe­ti­tion will fea­ture three days of round-robin match­es start­ing to­day at the Juan Aubin Cruz Abreu Col­i­se­um, which is set to ac­com­mo­date up to 8,000 spec­ta­tors.

Speak­ing ahead of the tour­na­ment, Stew­art said, "We are ho­n­oured to be here and play at this lev­el and for us it is the start of our in­ter­na­tion­al sea­son.

"Our main goal is the Caribbean cham­pi­onship in the Ba­hamas, so this is part of our prepa­ra­tion. We will face very tough op­po­nents, but we ex­pect Cos­ta Ri­ca to be the clos­est to our lev­el and give them a chal­lenge, and to put our best foot for­ward against Puer­to Ri­co and Mex­i­co.

"It is a new team as we are tran­si­tion­ing from the team that qual­i­fied from the FIVB World Cham­pi­onship in 2018. We have some young play­ers as young as 15 years old, so this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to give them ex­po­sure at this lev­el, and this will re­al­ly pre­pare us to con­tin­ue dom­i­nat­ing in our zone."

Par­tic­i­pat­ing teams will be award­ed FIVB World Rank­ing points valid for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process to the 2026 FIVB Vol­ley­ball Na­tions League and the FIVB World Cham­pi­onship 2027 and the cham­pi­on will earn the qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Se­nior NORCE­CA Women’s Con­ti­nen­tal Cham­pi­onship.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the NORCE­CA Se­nior Women’s Fi­nal Four, the TTVF is ex­pect­ed to send two teams to the CA­ZO­VA U-17 Cham­pi­onships in Ja­maica from Ju­ly 28 to Au­gust 4, then the Pan Amer­i­can Cup Se­nior Women’s Cham­pi­onship from Au­gust 1-11, and the CA­ZO­VA Se­nior Cham­pi­onships from Au­gust 14-24 in Ba­hamas.

T&T women's team: Des­tiny Leon, Jo­han­na Bel­mar, Ma­li­ka David­son, Ruth St Louis, Kay­lon Cruick­shank, Kris­tian­na Richards, Alyssa Hutchin­son, Jor­danne Hutchin­son, Deli­cia Pierre, Cheyenne Chin Choy, Sadie Torkar,

Tech­ni­cal staff: Daymi­an Stew­art (head coach), La Teisha Joseph (as­sis­tant coach), Max­ine Stafford (man­ag­er), Coreen An­drews (phys­io­ther­a­pist)

Tour­na­ment his­to­ry

Year*Gold*Sil­ver*Bronze

2019*Cana­da*Puer­to Ri­co*Mex­i­co

2022*Mex­i­co*Cu­ba*Puer­to Ri­co

2023*Puer­to Ri­co*Cos­ta Ri­ca*T&T

2024*Puer­to Ri­co*Mex­i­co*Cu­ba

Tour­na­ment sched­ule

To­day (Fri­day, Ju­ly 18)

T&T vs Mex­i­co, 6 pm

Puer­to Ri­co vs Cos­ta Ri­ca, 8 pm

To­mor­row (Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 19)

Mex­i­co vs Cos­ta Ri­ca, 6 pm

Puer­to Ri­co vs T&T, 8 pm

Sun­day (Ju­ly 20)

T&T vs Cos­ta Ri­ca, 5 pm

Puer­to Ri­co vs Mex­i­co, 7 pm