Expectations run high on the eve of Group I qualifier

MARIGOT, St. Martin August 9, 2013- Team officials from the four teams  of the FIVB Men's  World Championships group I were all keen to do very well in this competition and qualify for the next round.

"No team coming into this competition is coming here to lose and we are no different" said coach Lester Martinez of Nicaragua. "We have a young team but they are also full of experience and talent and we are very well prepared to fight to the finish and to do all that is in our hands to win this group," he concluded.

Team Bahamas was upbeat and the coach Raymond Wilson reported that the players were very anxious to get on the court.

"We expected to finish very high in this zone and therefore get a chance to go on into the next round. We are very familiar with team Barbados but and St Martin and Nicaragua are somewhat unknown to us. However,  from what we have seen  we firmly believe that  once we produce our best defense and play consistently well we will achieve objective" he noted.

Barbados' coach Ludger Niles is counting on his team’s fitness to see them through. "We have had a decent preparation period on the back on placing second in group H. We expect to give a total team effort and not really lean on individuals. We are very clear in our objective of going on to the next round and we will play every match in order to do so.

Team St. Martin was enjoying their status as underdogs. "No one expected us to reach this far in the competition and so we aim to continue creating surprises and breaking a few hearts along the way. We are here to play ball," said captain Paul Quellery.

The opening games see Nicaragua taking on Barbados while the home team St. Martin will play against Bahamas.

The winner of this leg automatically goes through to the third round to be played in 2014 while the second place team has to wait until a "best second team" is determined from all six qualifiers played during the course of 2013.