By Samuel Peters
After successfully defending their league titles for the 2024 Antigua and Barbuda Amateur Volleyball Association’s season, the coaches of both Stoneville and CAI Da Squad are confident of doing the same in the President Cup which begins on Monday night at the YMCA Sports Complex.
The coach of Stoneville, Olsen Joseph had the opportunity to speak with Observer Media and stated that even though the rules of the President Cup are different to the league, he believes that his team would be able to adjust accordingly and will be fielding the same team.
“We’re playing now for the President’s Cup, defending that competition as well, and you could, in this competition, basically, you could choose two players out of each those teams that didn’t make it in the top four, or the better players if you want to say, to help you out in that department, so starting tonight and definitely let’s see how that goes, because it’s a knockout competition, but other than that, that should be exciting as well, because some teams have brought in some players to enhance their campaign, you know, so we’re there, we’re just there, we’re going to play with who we have, because, you know, we like the challenge and we like the fight.”
Stoneville won the league for the seventh consecutive time on Saturday evening when they beat favourites Pytonz in three straight sets.
Coach of the CAI Da Squad shared similar sentiments when Observer media spoke to him hours before their match up against the Jets in the Female Division of the Presidents Cup.
However, he was not entirely happy about the standard of play in league, stating that it was not as competitive noting that his team won ten games unbeaten and only lost three sets out of the ten games played. With all that said, he is expecting his side to defend the title in the President Cup.
He said, “the President Cup starts tonight, we play against Jets, who were fourth place in the ranking, so, it’s one game, win or lose, and then that’s it, but if you win, now you go through and play the best of three, with the winner from the other second and third place team, so, tonight starts the volleyball rolling, with the main thing, the President Cup, which we expect to retain also.”
CAI Da Squad defended their league title for the fourth time in a row after beating Jets on Saturday also in three sets as Stoneville did.