Trinidad and Tobago strolled to their sixth-straight CAZOVA Senior Women Championship title when they defeated hosts Jamaica in three straight sets inside the National Indoor Sports Centre on Monday night.

Playing in front of the largest crowd of the six-day tournament, the Jamaicans started the game flat against the well oiled defending champions who needed no assistance. The T&T team, led by tournament MVP Channon Thompson quickly took an 8-1 lead in the first set before Jamaica’s Head Coach Ricardo Chong tried to stop the rot by taking a time out.

However, the response from the ladies was not forthcoming as the champions continued to stretch their lead. Playing to an obvious game plan, T&T attacked the Jamaican libero, Cherie Thompson, who struggled to handle the power serves of the tall Trinidadians. The players were barely warmed up before the first set was over at 25-12.

The Jamaicans were more competitive at the start of the second set, giving the crowd something to cheer about as they stayed close to their opponents at 6-4 and 8-6, but as the set wore on it became more of the same as T&T Captain Renele Forde, Sinead Jack and Darlene Ramdin moved the ball around to good effect to open up the court and score easy points. They eventually won the second set 25-16.

The crowd tried to lift the Jamaican team, but the force across the net was more than they could handle as Simone Asque, Tahleia Bishop and young Aiko Jones struggled to break T&T defensive line. Thompson continued to pound away at the Jamaican defence with her powerful jump serves before the champions finished off the demolition job at 25-10. Curiously, the winning point came from an overhit serve from Jamaica’s Danaisha Moss.

“We play a lot of strategy; we look for all the weaknesses on most of the teams. Jamaica had a lot of passing errors; the setter is a young setter. For her to be able to move away from her comfort zone, to be able to put the ball in different areas is very difficult. It wasn’t an easy tournament; we used this tournament to try different things and implement different things.

“We were able to use all our strengths at the right time — the blocks, the serves, the pass, the sets. We need to be able to use everything at the right time and today was one of the days that we anticipated that we were going to get a real challenge from Jamaica, so we came out with everything. We had precision serves that took the Jamaican’s out of their comfort zone,” said T&T Assistant Coach Nicholson Drakes.

President of the Jamaica Volleyball Association Rudolph Speid was happy that the primary objectives for the tournament were met.

“Our aim was to perform well and qualify for the next round, which we did by coming second. We are disappointed not to win, but Trinidad and Tobago is a very good team and we must congratulate them. In another three months we are going to be playing in the third round and the six best teams from NORSECA will go on to the World Championships,” he said.

Trinidad and Tobago have now won the title seven times overall, with their first win coming all the way back in 1996. Channon Thompson won three awards at the championships. In addition to tournament MVP, she was also the best server and the best outside hitter.