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PHILLIPSBURG, St. Maarten October 15, 2022.- It
was heart break for the home fans when they
witnessed their home team (St. Maarten) lose 3-1
(25-15, 25-19, 17-25 and 25-23) to BVI to reach
the finals of the ECVA Women’s Senior
Championship.
The fans were hoping for a five setter after
their team was down 2-0 and clawed their way
back to win the third. They were even more
optimistic when in the fourth set they slashed a
big BVI lead to just 1 when BVI had set point.
BVI persevered and won the point at the net that
hushed the crowd.
Once again Middle Blocker Shoranda Pickering
from the BVI garnered the game high points-19,
made up of 12 kills and 5 aces along with 2
blocks. She got some help from Captain Alexander
with 9 points.
St. Marten’s charge was led by captain Meulens
who grabbed 10 points. Meanwhile BVI benefitted
from a high error count- 51(or 55%) while
donating 35. The rest of the team scoresheet was
even with serves tied at 10 blocks going the way
of BVI 7-4 and while St. Maarten had the edge in
kills 32 to 25.
Antigua and St. Lucia will play to decide the
other finalist.
Coach of the BVI team Stephen Payne gave his
assessment of what happed, “we went away from
the game plan somewhat because of some
miscommunication. However a win is a win and we
are on our way to the finals. We came here and
played game by game and point by point and we
won’t move away from that strategy”.
His captain Henrietta Alexander was gleeful,
“when we came here, we were ranked 7th
in the ECVA with an underdog label. We have not
competed for several years and so some people
counted us out. However, we came here to upset
some people and that´s exactly what we did, now
we will be playing for gold”.
Coach Dimitri Beauperthuy was upbeat despite the
loss, “tonight we came up short, but the girls
poured in a tremendous effort after a slow
start. I feel proud to know that we gave
everything we had, and the opponents just got
the better of us on the day”.
Captain of the home team Akila Meulens enjoyed
the experience, “it was exciting as we dug a
hole, but we were coming out of it. If we had
that same energy from the start, things might
have been different but that´s behind us now and
all we can do is to refocus to try to win the
bronze, which is exactly what’s on my mind now”.
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