Foundation United ended a two year drought in Division One volleyball by defeating Cawmere 25-21, 25-12, 16-25, 25-19 when the men took to the court in the Goddard Enterprises Limited Senior Volleyball Knockout at the Wildey Gym on Wednesday night.
In the absence of Best Caribbean Opposite Shawn Simpson, who was engaged in squash duty, Cawmere still held the early upper hand by outplaying Foundation and rushing to a 19-12 advantage in the first set.
However, a belated introduction of United States-based national player Jabarry Goodridge saw an ignition of Foundation’s fiery attack which was only calmed somewhat when coach Fernando Skeete made some stunning wholesale substitutions in the third set.
Goodridge fired Foundation to a position of dominance with his relentless spiking which provided the cue for Darien Seale and Matthew Marshall to follow suit. The tremendous no-fear defence of libero Thomas Atkins also denied Cawmere many points when they countered with venom.
??Losing momentum
??However, Cawmere can only blame themselves for losing the momentum in the first set since although Goodridge entered the game with fire it was the apparently harmless serves from setter Michael Knight which confounded Cawmere who slipped from 12-19 to 19-21 before they finally passed the ball to get a side-out and their 20th point.
Cawmere lost that opening set and in spite of some hostile responses from former nationals Kengie Matthews, Cedric Proverbs, Eadium Cobham and Rene Archer, with the latter two being graduates from Foundation, the Waterford lads were out-blocked and out-spiked to face the ignominy of a straight sets loss.
The Skeete factor and inspiring ground defence from Proverbs saw Cawmere taking the third set and threatening to make a match of the contests. But, with Skeete reverting to the previous programme, Foundation savoured victory after two dry seasons.
Earlier Coverley Medical Centre Deacons had to fight off a plucky Juniors led by one of their own, Andriy Stapleton, to take a five setter 25-21, 21-25, 25-22, 20-25, 15-10. The counter from Kyle Brown and Sheldon Roach kept Deacons ahead in that bruising battle of relentless attack and vicious blocks.
Stapleton, who suits up for Deacons when he is not playing for the Juniors, hit the ball with tremendous force from both front and back court with Carlos Cyrus and Adam Niles being just as strong in attack.
However, the greater experience of Deacons and a number of errors in the decisive fifth set by the JuniorS denied the latter all chances at a big upset.
