The St Lucia Volleyball Association (SLVBA) annual national league which serves as the stage for clubs and players to showcase their skills and feed their competitive spirit got underway Friday.
The league also serves as a measuring stick for coaches to evaluate their players’ development and for the national coaches to identify players that could represent St Lucia on the regional and international stage.
This year the league will see six men’s and six women’s teams competing for the title. Last year’s Men’s Champions Jetsetters Volleyball will look to capture a fourth consecutive title, while Le Club Volleyballs ladies also hope to continue their winning streak.
The league will see some changes and additions: South Stars, formally Micoud Volleyball have added female counterparts to their fold. New to the league will be 2013 Commercial Volleyball League Champions, the Royal St Lucia Police Force, who won’t be led by “the commissioner” and NORCECA World Championship Qualification’s Best Blocker, Dayne Williams. Williams will continue to serve his championship club Jetsetters, while Daryl Evans has stepped down from Jetsetters to lead the police as they chase another title for this year.
The Junior Nationals teams will once again compete in the league. The league serves not only as an evaluation for the team, but as preparation for the 2013 Eastern Caribbean Junior Volleyball Championships (ECVA). The competition takes place in St Maarten (Men) and St Lucia (Women) August 15-18 and 21-24 respectively.
The association is also attempting to implement the Volleyball Information Systems, VIS, in this years’ league. The system allows the collection of individual and team statistics used to evaluate players and teams and strategize accordingly. The statistics are used to select individual awards of best blocker, spiker and tournament MVP. The implementation of this system helps the association train a pool, of VIS
specialists to serve when St Lucia hosts international tournaments.
The league promises to be exciting and competitive as players from the national teams namely Joseph Clercent, Julian Bissette, Dayne Willams, Samantha Mann, Tramaine Chassang and Gillan Octave return to lead their respective club teams.
