The Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Un­der-18 Beach Vol­ley­ball Camp and Tour­na­ment served off at the Cour­land Beach Sports Are­na, in Cour­land, Black Rock, To­ba­go, on Wednes­day (Au­gust 27).

The first part of the event, a two-day camp which end­ed Thurs­day (Au­gust 28), brought to­geth­er over 50 ath­letes and coach­es from Aru­ba, Bar­ba­dos, Cay­man Is­lands, Haiti, Mar­tinique, St Kitts and Nevis, US Vir­gin Is­lands, and the host na­tion, T&T.

This ini­tia­tive forms part of CA­ZO­VA’s on­go­ing de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, de­signed to pre­pare the re­gion’s young ath­letes for fu­ture Zon­al and Con­ti­nen­tal com­pe­ti­tions, as well as their pro­gres­sion to­ward World Cham­pi­onships and Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ments.

Wane Clarke, the Sec­re­tary for Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sport in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, ad­dressed the open­ing, en­cour­ag­ing the ath­letes—re­ferred to as “fu­ture Olympians”—and pledged con­tin­ued sup­port for host­ing such in­ter­na­tion­al events in To­ba­go.

An­nette Knott, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), ex­pressed her sat­is­fac­tion with sup­port­ing the Olympic Sol­i­dar­i­ty fund­ing re­quest for this project.

Knott high­light­ed that the event ties di­rect­ly in­to the lega­cy of the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games, which pro­vid­ed To­ba­go with a world-class beach vol­ley­ball fa­cil­i­ty to fos­ter youth de­vel­op­ment.

The camp was be­ing con­duct­ed un­der the guid­ance of Brazil­ian in­struc­tor Paulao Rober­to Mor­eira da Cos­ta, who will lead a two-day sem­i­nar for coach­es and ath­letes be­fore com­pe­ti­tion play be­gins.

The tour­na­ment com­po­nent be­gins to­day and ends to­mor­row, fea­tur­ing 50 ath­letes in boys’ and girls’ beach vol­ley­ball com­pe­ti­tion, pro­vid­ing ath­letes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their skills on the sand.

T&T will be rep­re­sent­ed by two teams in both the boys' and girls' com­pe­ti­tions.

In the girls’ di­vi­sion, Sadie Torkar and Bian­ca Perkins will team up along­side the To­ba­go duo of Da­vana Cow­an and Ne­han­da Ja­cob. Com­pet­ing for a podi­um fin­ish in the boys' di­vi­sion are Je­re­mi­ah Jankey and Michael Bur­kett, and To­bag­o­ni­ans Jay­den Dil­lon and Adriel Mark.

This age group rep­re­sents a cru­cial stage for the re­gion’s emerg­ing tal­ent pool, with many ath­letes as­pir­ing to be con­sid­ered for the up­com­ing 2026 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Sene­gal.