Barbados’ tenuous hopes of reaching the 2012 London Olympics in beach volleyball have been made even slimmer due to an injury to the island’s top player, Elwyn Oxley.
Four Bajan teams – two men’s and two women’s – will begin a quest to qualify for the next round of the Norceca Beach Volleyball Continental Cup when the first round serves off this morning at Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman.
But Oxley has been forced to withdraw from one of the Barbados beach teams because of a dislocated shoulder which resulted in him missing a key Deacons/Chargers Div. 1 volleyball clash, which his team Deacons lost.
Oxley’s place has been taken by the lesser rated Omar Sealy who will compete with the struggling Winston “Bobby Brown” Gittens. The other Barbados men’s team is a rather inexperienced duo of Kyle Browne and Jabarry Goodridge who have just graduated from the junior team.
The women’s teams are Shari Matthews in tandem with former indoor captain Anthazia Mason, and Mona Crawford teaming up with Sharon Bovell. Matthews won the recent Sizzlin’ Sands tournament at Brandons with Canadian Leila Piper.
Barbados is among a group of 12 countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Curacao, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago and host Cayman.
The top four countries will advance to meet the top four from Central America in the next round in 2012.
