Curacao defeats Cayman Islands to seal CAZOVA Championship spot   

PETION-VILLE, Haiti, July 10, 2016 - Curacao improved to a perfect 2-0 record in Group C when they defeated Cayman Islands in straight sets and qualified to the 2017 Caribbean Zonal Volleyball Association (CAZOVA) Championship, a qualifier to the 2018 FIVB World Championship at the Gymnasium Vincent “Tek Kale”.

Following a straight sets win over US Virgin Islands in their tournament, Curacao returned to the same venue less than 24 hours later and secured a controlled 25-18, 25-21, 25-20 victory to be certain of a top two finish in the four-team round-robin series to advance to the CAZOVA Championships in Trinidad and Tobago next year, and in the process the Second Round of FIVB World Indoor Championship Zonal Qualifiers.

 Reflecting on the loss which dropped his team to 0-2 Cayman Islands captain, Keeble Knight said: “We actually played much better in this match than we did against Haiti and we hope to improve much more in our final match.”

Mark Ray, Cayman Islands coach added: “Based on the group of players we have, the game we formulated, we stuck to it and did ourselves proud.

“As I said before we have the smallest squad and oldest players and we are showing we are still able to hang in there in sets.”

Curacao captain Anderson Prosper said, “Today was not a strong opponent for us and we were able to give the reserve players some playing time. The guys showed they are ready to step up if need and while not taking anything from Cayman Islands, we were too powerful.”

Patricio Bridgewater, coach of Curacao added, “We got to show the depth of our talent as Cayman Islands is not a strong team and we now look ahead to the Haiti match.”