U. S. Virgin Islands subdue Barbados 

St. Croix, Virgin Islands August 6, 2016 - Host U. S. Virgin Islands showed little mercy on a veteran and under strength Barbados and stormed to an easy 3-0 win with scores of 25-14, 25-21 and 25-15 in their Group A match of the new qualification process of the new qualification process to the 2018 FIVB World Championship.

Playing in the feature match of the opening night double-header at the Ronald "Ranche" Charles Basketball Arena, U. S. Virgin Islands backed by a vocal home crowd won in their match 3-0 with scores of 25-14, 25-21 and 25-15.

It was a well balanced attack for the NORCECA twentieth ranked Virgin Islanders that did the trick with Merissa Murphy scoring a match-high 8 points, punctuated with 6 spikes, one block and one spike while Captain Sacha Gumbs and Valissia Brathwaite chipped in with six spikes and one block a piece. 

Shani Leacock led her team of ten players with 7 points which consisted of 4 spikes and three blocks in the loss for the Barbados. 

Overall, U. S. Virgin Islands and Barbados played an awesome match. The U. S Virgin Islands dominated in the statistics winning 27-9 on spikes and 5-2 on service aces, while also committing less errors, 29 to 36. Barbados won in blocks 10-4. 

Barbados’s Captain Dee-Ann Smith stated “If we had stuck to our game plan it would’ve been better for us as a team, but we played okay. We are a relatively young team but I feel that we could’ve done better. “

When asked about his personal feelings towards the game, Coach Andrew Brathwaite of Barbados stated “I’m really disappointed. I think that we could’ve played much better than we played tonight. “ following that he agreed with his captain and stated that “we had too many low points during the game, we didn’t stick to the plan, we allowed the low points to over power the high points.”

The effort with this match was good, the captain, Sacha Gumbs stated “Honestly, coming out against Barbados, we knew it was going to be a young team due to the fact that they played against our Junior team as well, but that’s not an excuse, we still came out to play because we cannot take it light on anyone.” She went into detail by commending her team on their serve receive, she said “ Our defense were amazing, our serve receives were on point and our big hitters really came out to play. Although I'm the captain of the team, all of us are leaders. We did a good job.” Sacha also mentioned that she was satisfied with her team’s performance.

The coach Jerall Nicholas of the U. S. Virgin Islands agreed with his captain and stated “I feel that my girls really came out and jammed some ball. Our first game out they came and performed. I expect better performance for the next games because I know they haven’t reached their peek.” He specified that the passing and the defense were great. He said “I'm proud because they really had each other’s backs.”

Sunday in the first session, Curacao goes after its second win when they face Barbados at 9:00AM while US Virgin Islands meet host U. S. Virgin Islands at 11:00AM and in the third and final session at 5:00PM Barbados faces Turks & Caicos followed by Curacao and U. S. Virgin Islands at 7:00PM.