Barbados Community College (BCC) are the Massy Stores-sponsored National Sports Council’s Under-19 Volleyball champions for a second consecutive year.
Barbados Community College captured their second consecutive under-19 volleyball knockout title yesterday. (Pictures by Morissa Lindsay)
They hosted Combermere this evening and did not give them the most pleasant welcome as they dished out a three straight 25-12, 25-21 and 25-17 beating in what was really a one-sided affair for BCC who had a line-up of mostly junior national players.
The BCC coach Lerone Knight told Barbados TODAY he did not expect Combermere to hand them the title so easily but was otherwise happy with his team’s performance despite a few hiccups.
“For me I thought Combermere would put up a better game towards the final. I don’t know if it is the jitters at the final, but I expected them to really push at us and we really didn’t get that. But they second set was more competitive and I really like that they actually tried,” Knight said.
He added: “We lost some of our players due to injuries, lack of fitness and exams, so the core of our team isn’t actually here but the ones that normally fill in actually showed up so we had a good game. We had to focus on getting the guys to learn how to play together because the issue is once they come into BCC they come from different schools. So to actually get them to come together is somewhat of a challenge and we don’t have as much time to put the team together so we focus on discipline and having them adhere to each other.”
Combermere got off to a poor start and needed to rebound in the second set which they tried to do when they came from behind to tie the scores 15-15 but BCC took a one point lead at the second technical time out.
That made for an interesting set and junior national player Shevin Blades with two quality serves put his team on 18 and extended their lead by three. Another junior player is Paul Doughty who played a major role for Combermere and he was busy with assistance from Rashaun Alleyne who hit hard through BCC’s defence when the opportunity presented itself. Doughty at that stage hit hard to pull one back and that was followed by Alleyne with a block at the nets to take the Waterford lads on to 17 and from there on things got interesting when the scores were locked at 19-19. There was no stopping Alleyne and he came up with a nice block to give his side the lead 20-19 when Knight called time out for BCC. Community College then regained the momentum and lead compliments of Ashan Jordan with three good serves.
It was 23-20 to BCC when Alleyne swung hard for a point down the middle but it was not enough to stop the destruction of Carlos Cyrus’ thunderous strike and from there on BCC went on to take the win. BCC then closed out the game in grand fashion with some fantastic hard-hitting shots in all directions of the court. Combermere had their moments but BCC were simply too good on the day.
Junior national player Carlos Cyrus goes for another one of his vicious spikes against
Combermere from the outside.