Best Volleyball players combine for fitting season finale

By Morissa Lindsay

 

The All-Star women’s and men’s teams signed off the 2022 Goddard Enterprises Limited Barbados Volleyball Association (BVA) Division One season with good performances as both Shakera Hall and Ahkeem Mayers led their respective sides to victory last night at the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium.

It was a good showing from the top-rated volleyball players that stemmed from various clubs in the island. The spectators who turned out to watch the competitive action witnessed both victorious team captains Mayers and Hall being crowned Most Valuable Player and also winning the Patrick Oxley and Angelina Smith shields respectively. Oxley and Smith died a year apart from cancer and their names will forever live on within the BVA family.

Team Mayers won the five sets showdown, 25-21, 25-22, 17-25, 22-25 and 15-11 during the men’s contest that lasted two hours and 23 minutes against the team captained by Akeel Oxley. Meanwhile the women’s encounter did not serve up the type of competitive delight as team Hall registered a comfortable 25-12, 25-21 and 25-23 against the side led by Thonya Joseph.

Oxley and Mayers grew up playing for Deacons Volleyball Club, the 2022 men’s double crown champions. While they are accustomed to being teammates and two of the best young outside hitters for Deacons, last night they were on opposite sides of the nets and it would have been a bittersweet moment for Oxley not being able to capture the first ever shield named after his dad Patrick.

However, the victorious Mayers team coached by Mark Lewis were elated with their performance, especially the captain who noted that this was his second time playing in an All- Stars team but first time leading from the front.

During a post-match interview, Mayers said: “It feels great to win and while I did not have the strongest team on paper, we still showed up, worked hard and were able to execute because we came to play. In tonight’s match I really felt that the fact we played as a team made the difference for us. When someone is down, we come together as a team and cheer up the other fellow.”

Team Mayers took a 2-0 advantage against Oxley coached by Andrew Culpepper and that forced them to dig deep heading into the third set. Oxley had lots of work to do and the obvious thing was to reduce the number of errors. Despite the continuous mistakes, captain Oxley still did well giving it his all on attack but he needed his players to get their acts together.

Oxley encouraged his players to stay in the game and they managed to come from behind and tied the match 2-2 as they refused to go down without a fight. That forced a decisive fifth set to determine the All-Star champions and unfortunately team Oxley were unable to keep up as they lost by four points.

The victorious members of Team Mayers comprised three players each from Progressive, Zario Cummins, Fabian Cox and Yvan Grant – from Cawmere they were Robert Gooding, Ramon Blades and Kemroy Percival – Deacons had Mayers, Ronald Rice, Sheldon Roach – All Stars had two in Derion Hurley and Jonathan Alleyne while the other player was Unri Clarke of Foundation United.

In the women’s clash, captain Hall who is a member of University of the West Indies Blackbirds led by example as one of the top female outside hitters in Barbados. During an interview with Barbados TODAY, Hall explained that her team gelled well and she was pleased with how they performed.

“The match was good. I think we gelled as a team very well in a short space of time, so it was very exciting to play with all of these girls. It is a very special moment for me and for Barbados in general to get everyone back into volleyball and doing these kinds of things would keep the crowd engaged and it would encourage younger players to want to play and get on an all-star team,” Hall said.

Team Hall coached by Sheldon Roach who led Deacons women to the BVA Division One Knockout trophy recently, would have been pleased with his team’s performance.

This was the first time Hall has played or captained an all-star team and it was a tremendous showing from her and the team as early as the opening set when they won by a whopping 13 points and they never looked back against team Joseph coached by Cedric Proverb who was also outstanding this season when he led Burger King Clapham Bulls Toners women to the BVA Division One League title.

The players on team Hall were fellow UWI teammates Afiya Taylor, Nikita Wickham and Jayde Adams – Deacons had three representatives in Serena Edwards, Andrea Flores and Marissa Dowell. Meanwhile there was only one representative from each of the other clubs, they were Shaina Bradshaw of Chargers, Kandia Shorey of Development Motion in Volleyball, Kimberly Austin of Club United, Risa Niles of Carlton and Shamandra Shillingford of Toners.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb