With on­ly three teams reg­is­tered to com­pete, one-time sil­ver and bronze medal win­ners, US Vir­gin Is­lands made a bold state­ment when they de­feat­ed host and six-time cham­pi­ons T&T 3-0 (25-21, 25-13, 25-11 in their 2021 Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Ju­nior Women (Un­der-21) Cham­pi­onship cur­tain-rais­er at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na, in Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do, on Thurs­day.

Speak­ing af­ter his team re­cov­ered from its slow start to si­lence the T&T crowd via their ef­fi­cient at­tack­ing ef­fort, USVI coach Isaac Raphael ad­mit­ted his team was very slow but re­cov­ered and came away with an im­pres­sive win.

He added, "Our girls were a bit ner­vous com­ing up against the host coun­try and a team that we know al­ways does well, but once we got set­tled we be­gan to find our mo­men­tum and came back strong in the first set af­ter which we nev­er let-up."

Team cap­tain and his daugh­ter, Alek-Wek Raphael echoed the views of her coach and said, "We came out very slow, but we knew once we got go­ing and ex­e­cut­ed our plans we would get a pos­i­tive re­sult.

"We were able to stick to our plans and won and we will cel­e­brate this win and plan ahead for the next match."

Gideon Dick­son, coach of the T&T was clear in his as­sess­ment of his team's per­for­mance ad­mit­ting that his team was beat­en by a su­pe­ri­or out­fit.

"We went down to­day by a bet­ter team than us and there is no shame in that and we al­so did not help our­selves by play­ing in spurts and not hav­ing that con­sis­ten­cy to be more com­pet­i­tive.

"Go­ing for­ward we will learn from this en­counter and we in­tend to come back stronger in our next match.

Shan­ice Cot­toy, vice-cap­tain of the host team said her team al­so had a bad day and is much bet­ter than what they showed.

"Our en­er­gy lev­els were good to start the first set, but then af­ter we were beat­en in that open­ing set, we dropped our lev­els when we need­ed to do op­po­site and put up much more of a fight."

"Our team is a mix­ture of play­ers with some ex­po­sure and we al­so have some play­ers who lack that ex­pe­ri­ence, so we in­tend to re­cov­er from this and come back stronger."

The T&T women will re­turn to ac­tion on Fri­day against Suri­name from 7 pm while the lat­ter faces US Vir­gin Is­lands in the fi­nal round-robin match in the three-team pool at the end of which the top two teams will con­test the gold medal match on Sun­day from 7 pm.

OTH­ER RE­SULTS

Mar­tinique stunned de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Suri­name (25-22, 25-12, 25-22)

Haiti came from be­hind to sub­due Ja­maica (23-25, 25-16, 25-16, 25-21)