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(From Left: Back row) St. Stephen’s Physical Education teacher, Shakira Douglin; Boys’ National Juniors Coach, Elwyn Oxley; Anthazia Mason, Coach of Girls’ National Juniors; and West Terrace PE teacher, Roderick Mason, stand with students of the four schools participating in the inaugural National Primary Schools' Volleyball Invitational competition.

Volleyball competition to hit primary schools

Volleyball is coming to our island’s primary schools courtesy of JolieB Productions and the Warrens Sports Club.

The inaugural National Primary Schools’ Volleyball Invitational Competition is scheduled for next Wednesday at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex.

The one-day contest, which is being held in association with the Barbados Volleyball Association, is slated to serve off at 9.30 a.m. sharp.

West Terrace Primary, Eden Lodge Primary, St. Christopher’s Primary and St. Stephen’s Primary are the four schools invited to take part in this the first edition of the volleyball tournament.

Each team will be comprised of 12 players and at any given time, two girls must be on court for each side. They will play a round robin format, with the top two playing for the title and the next two for third place.

The round robin stage will feature one 21 point set, as well as the third place game. The finals will be a two best of three game, with the first two games going to 15 and the third game, if necessary, going to 11 points.

Speaking at the launch of the competition at the Barbados Olympic Association yesterday, Julia Broome, one of the organisers, stated that the competition was powered by the local volleyball team, Pan American International Insurance Corporation Warrens Sports Club (WSC), with the goal of investing in the sports future. Warrens in recent years has been both the League and Knockout Women’s Champions.

“It is necessary to invest our time, efforts and capital in order to give the youth of Barbados opportunities to excel in sporting disciplines and fulfil our mandate of building this nation through sports,” she stated.

Also present was former national volleyball player and Vice President of the Barbados Volleyball Association, Kenmore Bynoe. He thanked the Warrens Sports Club for their efforts in making the competition possible and said that it is a
necessary step in making sure that local volleyball continues to grow.

“Something is definitely happening today in volleyball with the launch of this primary school competition, because it has been a dream of the Barbados Volleyball Association for many years to break into the primary school sporting programme to get volleyball up and running at that level,” the Vice-President said.

He noted that by the time children hit secondary school, they would have already not only been exposed to the basics of netball, football and cricket, but they would have been exposed to various competitions catered by the National Sports Council.

There has been a cry locally that the senior national volleyball teams have not done well regionally in recent times, but Bynoe highlighted that the junior national programme has been bearing fruit and the teams are doing extremely well.
As such the coming competition would certainly reinforce the foundation which is being set currently for the youth.

Sponsors on board with this movement to place volleyball in primary schools include Pan American Life Insurance Company Limited, Connoisseur Improvement Services Incorporated, Azure Studios, odbo!h, Innogen Technologies Incorporated, Ultra Care Building & Maintenance, Chefette Restaurants Limited and Gymnasium Limited.
(AS)

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