Women’s Volleyball heads to World Championships qualifying series

BVI National Team: BVI National Volleyball Team. Front: Jackie Weeks, Valissa Bratwaithe, Patti Romney and Ivy Cameron. Back: Kwele Williams, Sabinah Mason, Janelle Scatliffe, Melissa Amey and Dwayne Rubaine

BY DEAN GREENAWAY

The BVI national women’s Volleyball team will face the Nederland Antilles at 7 p.m. tonight, in it’s first foray in the Federation of International Volleyball World Championships qualifying series at the National Arena in Kingston, Jamaica.

Team BVI will play hosts Jamaica at 9 p.m. on Saturday and wrap up zone play against the Cayman Islands at 7 p.m. on Sunday. The top two teams in the zone will advance to the next round.

The team has been preparing for the last six weeks head coach Kwele Williams said. Although they knew of the tournament, no fixed date was set until mid February. “We’re dealing with an experienced set of players and most of them have been working out prior to and getting back into game shape,” Williams said.

As the tournament approached, Williams said practices became more intense and players felt like a team. “During the early days, people were coming from different teams and trying to fit in, but, now that that we have been doing it for a while, they have come together and we’ve had good practices over the last two weeks.”

The team did not have any warm-up matches and there were several delays with the league that did not open until Saturday. Williams said the league usually gets underway in late January or early February and the players would have been seeing live action. “At one time, there were players preparing on their own knowing that the league was upcoming,” he said. “So they were getting in shape prior to, but, as a team itself, that only came later.”

Williams said the BVI has been among the top teams in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and won the 2003 tournament. A BVI team has played against the Cayman Islands before but not Jamaica and the Nederland Antilles.

In an interview with The Gleaner, Jamaican women’s Volleyball technical director Phillip Greenland has expressed optimism about his national team's chances of advancing to the second round of the 2006 Women’s World Championship from the Norceca Pool A.

“The British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands have not yet reached our level so we expect to beat them,” Greenland said. “Our greatest challenge should come from the Netherlands Antilles. They have a deeply entrenched system and thus their talent base is presumably strong. However, I believe we can beat them too.”

Jamaica is the number two ranked Caribbean team and 46th in the world. They are the highest ranked team in this pool of four, with the Netherlands Antilles ranked at 56th.

Comprising the team are: Jackie Weeks, Melissa Amey, Ivy Cameron, Jenelle Scatliffe, Sabinah Mason, Valissa Bratwaithe, Celine Alphonso, Michelle Todman-Georges and Patti Romney. Coaches; Kwele Williams and Dwayne Rubaine.