Puerto Rico and Mexico won the women’s and men’s championships, respectively, in front of packed stands at the Security Centre NORCECA Beach Volleyball Tournament, on Sunday, 21 May.
The tournament, held on Seven Mile Beach, featured 21 countries plus host Cayman Islands, whose women’s team of Stefania Gandolfi and Heather Thompson placed 12th overall.
Taking gold for the women were Alanis Navas and Maria Gonzalez of Puerto Rico, who came out swinging against Guatemala, winning the final 0-2 (14-21, 15-21).
Speaking with the Compass after the match, Gonzalez said this year was about redemption after coming up short at the 2022 NORCECA event.
“We came out with a set mentality to win the gold because last year we won silver,” Gonzalez said. “Thank God we came out strong. We loved the energy; we loved the crowd, and it just helped us win in the end.”
For the men’s final, Mexicans Juan Virgen and Miguel Sarabia closed the show after taking the title from defending champions United States, in a match that ended 2-0 (21-15, 21-16).
The Cayman Islands duo of Gandolfi and Thompson exceeded expectations, winning three of their seven matches.
They notched two consecutive wins early in the tournament to gain momentum heading into their remaining Pool D matches on Saturday.
However, the pair would miss out on a chance to advance to the quarter-finals after dropping two close matches, including the hard-fought loss against Jamaica that ended 1-2 (15-21, 21-16, 10-15).
Gandolfi and Thompson moved on to the consolation quarter-final bracket, where they played fellow Cayman team Chlouie Gaetos and Deajra Tulloch, winning convincingly 2-0 (21-9, 21-11).
They went on to lose 0-2 (15-21, 10-21) to Mexico in a game that could have positioned them for a chance to finish ninth. The Cayman pair lost a close game to Nicaragua, who finished 11th, with Gaetos and Tulloch just below their Cayman teammates in the final standings at 13th, having notched one win in the tournament.
The tournament, which ran from 19-21 May, also featured the Cayman men’s side of Casey Santamaria and Jesario Ebanks coming away with a win.
After the tournament, Ebanks said that he was proud of his Cayman teammates’ performance in what he called a difficult tournament.
“I will definitely say that the competition was really, really difficult this year,” Ebanks told the Compass. “You have high-level teams coming in…So, I didn’t expect less then amazing people playing and we knew that coming into the competition.
“We just went in with the mindset that we were going to try our hardest and do our best out there and that’s what we did.”
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