Local teams shine as Fun Divas clinch title

Ben Saunders, Sports Editor

Published Apr 23, 2018 at 8:00 am (Updated Apr 22, 2018 at 11:54 pm)

Digging deep: Elisabeth Rae, main image and below, helps Island Girls to the runners-up spot in the Bermuda Open at Warwick Academy on Saturday (Photograph by Blaire Simmons)

Experience shone through from the local volleyball teams at the Bermuda Open this weekend, with the Island Girls — a squad of Bermuda national team alumni — finishing runners up to the very impressive Fun Divas, from Baltimore.

Fun Divas were undefeated throughout the tournament, winning the final 25-18, 25-20. Island Girls led the second set 20-18, but Fun Divas clinched the title by winning the last eight points.

Elisabeth Rae, the Bermuda women’s team head coach who played for Island Girls, was pleased with her team’s efforts.

“It was just a game of managing your errors, because they’re a hard-hitting team, so we had to make sure we didn’t make a lot of mistakes and we had to keep our game clean,” she said of Island Girls’ performances.

“We thought we played really well, because we’re a bunch of alumni from the national team who don’t play any more, so we just came together to play this.

“Most of us play recreationally now and again, but this team have never played together before.

“We’re really happy for Baltimore, who came here and didn’t lose a game all tournament and they’ve had a great time exploring Bermuda. They’ve done a lot of touristy things, and been to the beach, and all over St George’s and Tobacco Bay.”

White Caps, one of two sides made of players from the Bermuda women’s team, won the bronze medal after beating Digz 25-20, 25-22 in the third-place match. White Caps trailed 10-8 in the first set, but seized the momentum with seven straight points off of several unreturnable serves from Nicole Volek.

Powerful hitting from Allison Lacoursiere and strong defence from Lysmeiri Herrera also helped White Caps on their way, and they trailed 22-16 in the second set, before sealing their third-place finish by winning the final nine points.

“What we did with the women’s team was we tried to create two equal-strength teams,” Rae added. “So we didn’t try to put in our best team and our second team, to make better competition and it gave a lot of players who wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play with a No 1 team a real chance to develop and get a lot better and get some really important match experience.

“They did amazingly well. They played really well, but it also shows what we need to work on to get even better because everybody can always get better. They did well, both Juanita Blee and I are really happy with how the women played, but now we know what we’re going to work on for the US Open in a month’s time.”

The Junior National Team and Paradise Hitters also showed promise, with Sy McPeek showing superb all-round skills offensively and defensively.

“This year the junior under-17, under-16 and under-14 teams went away and they took those three teams and split them into two for this tournament and they performed phenomenally well,” Rae said. “The older team put a lot of pressure on the senior women’s national teams. They pushed a lot of teams and their performances were awesome.”

The next event for the men’s and women’s national teams is the US Open at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Centre in Dallas at the end of May.

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