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.