Martinique claims first victory

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado USA (Sept. 28, 2017) – Martinique defeated St. Vincent & the Grenadines 25-10, 25-14, 25-20 on Thursday to conclude pool play at the NORCECA Men’s Continental Championship with its first victory in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Joann Breleur led Martinique with a team-high 12 points including six aces. Gregory Alpha and scored seven kills in the victory, while Rodrigue Larcher came off the bench midway through the second set to have seven points.

Ronaldo Franklyn and Asmond Franklyn each tallied seven points in the loss for St. Vincent & the Grenadines.

Martinique’s serve kept St. Vincent & the Grenadines out of system much of the night with a 9-1 ace advantage. The victors also held advantages of 32-23 in kills and 6-4 in blocks.

Martinique finished Pool C with a 1-2 record, while St. Vincent & the Grenadines ended the group phase with a 0-3 record.

The NORCECA Men’s Continental Championship is a qualification tournament into the 2018 FIVB World Championship. The top three teams in the 10-team field earn berths into the World Championship, while the top two teams in a second NORCECA qualifier held later this fall round out NORCECA’s five vacancies into the world event.

Martinique Coach Eddy Erialc: “We are very happy for this victory and it is very good for the morale of the team. The only difference from earlier matches to today is St. Vincent is not at the same level of the other teams and that allowed us to play better. Now we will work toward getting the best classification possible.”

Martinique Captain David Lefaivre: “We are very happy because it is our first victory. We prepared very well and that helped us get the win. We need to keep playing like this and keep trying our best to win the rest of the tournament.”

St. Vincent & the Grenadines Coach Brian Burke: “We just have to regroup. The thing that we are seeing is that we are making errors.

We have to work on that. The game today we just didn’t show up. There were patches where we did well. We need to be consistent. We keep starting poorly and have to play catchup. Some times when the lead is so great, some of the guys have dropped their heads and we have to work on that. As we were discussing, we have to play a lot more games at this level to maintain the intensity and at a certain level. We have to go back to the drawing board and work harder.”

St. Vincent & the Grenadines Captain Cluevvan Cumberbatch: “Well yesterday I said we would win, but we made a lot of errors and simple mistakes. We have to learn from our mistakes, keep on motivating the guys and cut back on the errors.”