BVI Captain, Pattie Romney accepts the 3rd Place Trophy frm Roy Barry at the FIVB World Qualifier Tournament. Photo: harlie jackson/VINO

Team Dominica made it a Men's and Womens Double with victory over Antigua in Sundays Pool F final. Photo: Charlie Jackson/VINO

Tournament MVP WAS Ann Maria Xavier of Dominica. Photo: Charlie Jackson/VINO

The match, worthy of any final, saw the BVI team leave everything on the court as they upped the tempo against the team that had beaten them 3-1 on opening day.

Gone though were the nerves and back was the fire.

Tamisha Georges controlled the defense, Tyalia Nibbs and Amondona Creese were commanding, Pattie Romney was full of control at the set up and showed her wonderful array of deft touches to change the direction of play, Deborah Dagou timed her run and leaps from the back to deadly fashion powering the ball through the St Maarten defense like an avenging sword, Sabinah Clement dominated at the net, Sharonda Pickering did all and more that was asked of her, Lynelle Gumbs served with precision, power and purpose and then there was Henrietta Alexander and Jackie Weekes.

Not only did they take the glory with a succession of searing spikes, but also putting in the hard yards with all round court performances containing despairing dives, resilient retrievals and brick wall like blocks.

The BVI reached the first technical time out up 8-4 in the first game following key contributions from Clement, Dagou and Weekes. They were up 11-5 after Alexander and Romney fired home winners and then came the first of those Romney trade mark reverse tips to make it a 17-9 lead.

St Marten mounted a fight back to reduce the deficit to 21-16, but winners from Romney, Weekes made it 23-18.

Another Weekes’ smash and an error from St Maarten and the first game was the BVI’s 25-20.

St Maarten leveled at 1-1 after a 26-28 second game win and the 3rd game was neck and neck until at 17-17 the BVI pulled ahead with winners Dagou, Alexander and 2 tip over blocks from Clement to make it 25-18.

The third and conclusive game was broken open by the Dagou, who hit 6 winners as a 12- 9 score line became 21-10. Weeks and Alexander added two more to the score and appropriately it was Alexander who was serving as the game was won 25-10.

The final lacked the intensity of the BVI/St Maarten match, but was a great advertisement for the game. Antigua met the powerful Dominicans set up for set up and spike for spike. However they made more errors as they sought to gain the upper hand and the experienced Dominicans ended up winning 3-1 to record a Men’s and Women’s 1st round Double

Dominica also dominated the individual awards with Catharine Francis picking up the Best Receiver, Best Digger and Best Libero. Best Setter was Dominica’s Elizabeth Joseph and team mate Ann Maria Xavier was named Top Scorer and MVP.

Jackie Weekes picked up Best Server and Antigua’s Sharon Payne was Best Blocker.

Dominica had earlier thwarted any plans by the BVI to finish in the top 2 as they romped to their third successive win, beating the host nation 3-0 (25-19, 25-20, 25-16)

The BVI ‘s Assistant Coach Stephen Payne thought on the day, Dominica was smarter than they were in terms of ball passing and consistency with the passing.

“We fell down in too many of the fundamentals of the game, as passing and serving were a big headache and that cost us the match,” Payne declared.

Payne thought that the Dominicans were “better organised and played the better game”.

Weekes was also the stand out player when buoyed by vocal home support, the British Virgin Islands came from a set down to beat Antigua and Barbuda 3-1(16-25, 25-14, 25-19, and 25-22) in the last round of group play to finish third in the standings and set up the nerve jangling encounter with St Maarten.

Weekes said it was a deliberate effort to play with a passion and fire in their bellies, following the earlier loss to French St Maartin.

And Captain of the BVI team Patricia Romney revealed that the morale support of the home crowd was a fillip for their success.

“I must say that the crowd was a big, big help”, Romney admitted.

An error strewn opening match against St Maarten had seen the hosts go down 3-1(25-15, 18-25, 25-15, and 25-17). However as Head Coach, Willis Potter, said it was his team’s flaws which caused the defeat. “We had difficulty with our passing, both in offence and defense, outside of that, the girls played hard”, Potter said.

He thought with them having had a feel of the tournament, they should be fired up for their next match.

The BVI’s main task was to qualify for the 2nd round, so in that respect the job was done, but with a year until the next group stage there is a lot of work and planning to do.

The lack of exposure and competition with other teams at this level nearly cost the team dear, which along with trying to implement the fresh ideas of trainer Mattias De Fulvio without playing actual games almost proved a task to difficult.

There are plenty of encouraging signs though and with Henrietta Alexander and Sharonda Pickering representing the next generation of players there is plenty of reason to be optimistic for round 2. However, the Association will have to plan carefully and look at way to get more women up to the required levels of play well in advance if they hope to reach round 3.