T&T's Un­der-19 women's vol­ley­ballers went down to their Bar­ba­di­an coun­ter­parts three games to one (3-1) in their open­ing match of the Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Un­der-19 Cham­pi­onships in Span­ish Town, Ja­maica, on Sat­ur­day.

The first match in the pre­lim­i­nary rounds of the tour­na­ment in Pool 'A' at the GC Fos­ter Col­lege, saw the six-time cham­pi­ons T&T tak­ing longer than ex­pect­ed to set­tle in­to the match, which their coun­ter­parts cap­i­talised on in the first set 25-17.

The girls in red, white, and black fought back in the sec­ond set and looked good in the ear­ly ses­sion, open­ing up a 13-8 ad­van­tage, but the Ba­jans came back, dis­play­ing true grit to lev­el the scores at 13-apiece be­fore mov­ing ahead for the win, 25-21 in the sec­ond set for a com­fort­able 2-0 lead.

T&T then staged a dar­ing come­back in the third set 25-16 to give them­selves hope at the end of the third set, a re­sult that sent the match to a fourth set. The Ba­jans then pro­duced a no-non­sense dis­play in the fourth to seal the win 25-13.

The T&T girls will now have to beat Ja­maica in their next match for the chance to be among the teams ad­vanc­ing to the semi­fi­nals. Yes­ter­day, in the lone boys' match on the day host Ja­maica was ex­pect­ed to face Cu­ra­cao.