The fourth edition of the VolleyBarbados championship series proved to be a tremendous success for the five visiting Canadian teams and exposed glaring weaknesses of Barbados’ volleyball.
The tournament was won by University of British Columbia Heat, who defeated former queens the University of Montreal Heat in the finals while Barbados’ double crown queens Flow Sentry Brokers Insurance Deacons ended rock bottom in the competition.
Deacons were missing the league’s Most Valuable Player Fabia Greaves, who is ill, but fans still expected them to put on a better show of winning more than one match as knockout MVP Julia Lewis, De-Ann Smith and Dionne Licorish were reinforced with the inclusion of professionals Anicia Wood and Shari Matthews along with multitalented Rhe-Ann Niles.
However, the superior defence, setting, spiking, blocking and serving of the visitors showed that Barbados’ women’s volleyball could be in a serious crisis.
The Canadians put Barbados on the back foot constantly with their directed serves, making a mockery of Deacons’ passing, with libero Marissa Dowrich having a horrible series.
Poor passing taxes good setters and the ball-handling skills, lack of fitness and sets selections of Sharleen Browne and Taymar Maynard would hardly classify the duo as better than average playmakers. Sadly, with those shortcomings, Browne and Maynard blocked poorly and their ground play was never a factor.
On the other side of the net the visitors tutored in skilful court craft where their passing was outstanding and their defence breathtaking.
The Canadians setters ran smooth attacks with their spikers, showing ball control to pepper the court when the blocks were beaten or to hit the ball off the blocks when they were set properly.
Unfortunately, Deacons middles Wood, Niles and Smith suffered from weak setting while the predictable outside sets as a result of poor passing did not help Matthews, who looked short of game fitness, and Lewis, who obviously suffered from a lack of mental readiness.
The strategies used by coaches Andrew Culpepper and Elwyn Oxley underscored the fact that our local champions triumph because of how poor the opposition often play.
Long-serving chairman of selectors Andrew Hoyte summed up the local performance by saying that the overall court craft and the obvious preparation of the Canadians show our need to pay greater attention to the basic skills at club level.
“We could have picked any three players from one of those visiting teams to fashion a national team around since they all showed proper schooling in all aspects of volleyball.
“The time is long past for our clubs and the national teams to train two days a week for two hours and then expect our women’s volleyball to improve or to compete successfully at the regional or international level,” said Hoyte.
