TRINIDAD and Tobago will be among 12 countries doing battle from tomorrow in Jamaica the opening leg of CAZOVA (Caribbean Zonal Volleyball Association) women’s beach qualifying for the Olympic Games. Players from Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Suriname, United States Virgin Islands and host country will also be competing in the three-day tournament. Each country will be represented by two pairs and the top six countries will advance to the second of four rounds of NORCECA (North, Central America and the Caribbean) qualifying for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, which will be staged in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August next year. Apphia Glasgow and La Teisha Joseph will be flying the red, white and black in this competition, five days after reaching the quarter-finals of the opening leg of this year’s NORCECA Beach Tour in the Cayman Islands. This country’s other representatives are Elki Philip and Shenelle Gordon, who defeated Joseph and Glasgow all three times during the second leg of the Trinidad and Tobago Volleyball Federation’s (TTVF) Beach series last month. Glasgow, Gordon and Joseph are young and relatively inexperienced, but Philip is one of T&T’s most accomplished players on the sand. The highlights of the veteran’s career were just missing the podium with fourth-place finishes twice in NORCECA events, along with competing alongside Nancy Joseph in the Pan American Games in 2007. The format is the same for the men’s qualifying and the opening round will take place in Trinidad and Saith Park, Chaguanas, from next Friday until Sunday. The hosts will be represented by the Fabian Whitfield/Daneil Williams and Josiah Eccles/Tevin Joseph combinations. Williams and Whitfield won all ten TTVF tournaments at home this year, but finished third in their round-robin group and failed to reach the knockout phase of the NORCECA tournament in Cayman Islands last weekend.