Host T&T were crowned the first cham­pi­ons of the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Un­der-23 Men’s Cham­pi­onship host­ed by the T&T Vol­ley­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTVF) at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na Sun­day.

This was af­ter the “Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers”, led by cap­tain Nicholas Williams, de­feat­ed Suri­name in a some­times heat­ed but en­thralling con­test 21-25, 25-20, 30-28, 23-25, 15-10 with the cap­tain right­ful­ly sink­ing the match-win­ning point for the host off a failed block by Suri­name.

The win avenged a loss al­so in five sets to the same op­po­nents in their fi­nal round-robin match and se­cured the lone qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot to the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cup next year.

On Sat­ur­day night, with both teams al­ready as­sured of con­test­ing the gold medal match, Suri­name edged T&T 25-18, 25-19, 20-25, 23-25, 15-11 to fin­ish top of the four-team round-robin pool with a 3-0 record and 11 points while the Sean Mor­ri­son-coached T&T end­ed in the sec­ond spot with a 2-1 record and 10 points ahead of their meet­ing in the cham­pi­onship match.

With both tech­ni­cal staff opt­ing to rest key play­ers ahead of the more im­por­tant gold medal match to come a day lat­er, it was left up to the bench play­ers to grab the spot­light and that they did with the Car­los Or­ta-coached Suri­name grab­bing a 2-0 lead in sets in the best-of-five con­test.

How­ev­er, spurred on by the home crowd and some pow­er­ful spik­ing from Jahreef Miguel, Michael Bur­kett and Eli­jah Best, T&T clawed their way back in­to the con­test by tak­ing the next two sets, 25-20, 25-23, to ex­tend the match to a fifth and de­cid­ing con­test.

Both teams then in­tro­duced their reg­u­lar starters for the start of the fifth set, and T&T start­ed bright­ly. The lo­cal team raced in­to a 6-3 lead in the de­cider, and nine points away from vic­to­ry.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing a time-out by Or­ta, a FIVB de­vel­op­ment coach, Suri­name then won five straight points to grab an 8-6 ad­van­tage.

T&T then drew lev­el at 9-9, but Suri­name then pulled away again, win­ning four straight points for a 13-9 cush­ion be­fore clos­ing out the match by win­ning two of the next four points and brag­ging rights ahead of the ti­tle match, and no doubt a con­fi­dence boost as well.

In Sun­day’s first men’s match for the bronze medal, Mar­tinique de­feat­ed Guade­loupe, 18-25, 25-22, 25-19, 25-21.

Both teams al­so met on Sat­ur­day in their fi­nal round-robin match, which Mar­tinique al­so won 25-19, 25-19, 25-23.