Beach volleyball players seeking to represent Bermuda at the 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games have an opportunity to impress national selectors.

Today and tomorrow, seven male players will be pursuing the two available slots, with the action going down at Coral Beach. The final process is taking place next weekend.

Benjamin Barnett, Braedon Madeiros-Cooke, Brandon Sousa, Connor Sommerville, Kyle Hamilton, Marcus Rodrigues and Sean Tucker are the men up for selection. The men’s team are gearing up for a maiden appearance at the CAC Games.

Meagan McPeek, the national team chairwoman overseeing the qualification process, broke down the selection process.

“This weekend is the men’s first round qualifier tournament,” McPeek told The Royal Gazette.

“This is all the men that were selected in our long list for the CAC Games and they’ll be competing in a tournament. Everybody plays everybody in different partnerships in a best-of-three format.

“At the end of that, we’ll have our final four, the top two defenders and top two blockers. Next weekend, we’ll have the final trials match with those four on Saturday and then the No 1 team versus the No 2 team on Sunday.

“Those going to represent Bermuda at the CAC Games in Dominican Republic would have come out on top of the qualifiers. We should know the final pair at the end of the tournament on April 18.

“From there, we’ll continue on with our training groups. Our national team continues to train and those athletes will have an accelerated training schedule.

“Our whole national team will still be training and competing at Norceca events through the summer.”

For the women, who are preparing for a second appearance at the CAC Games, eight players are vying for the two available slots.

Hailey Trott, Hailey Moss, Isabella Sousa, Kayley Hamilton, Megan Hands, Natalie Gazzard, Olivia Gazzard and Sopie Weikl are the females in contention.

Lisa LeBlanc and Megan Calhoun, who represented Bermuda at the last CAC Games in El Salvador, are not up for selection. LeBlanc has retired while Calhoun is no longer residing on the island.

“The women's qualifiers are happening on May 9, 10 and 13. Then they have a final tournament on May 15,” McPeek said.

“From our eligible athletes, we have a few younger ones, but most of them have been to some Norceca tournaments.”

The athletes chosen for CAC Games will compete at the second edition of the national championships.

“The junior national championships are taking place June 20 and our senior national championships, which is an open tournament, will be July 18 and 19,” McPeek said.

“We actually moved the national championships because last year we had the tournament in August. But we moved it up so that we can have a final local championship, to give players as much competition as we can get.

“That’s one of the biggest challenges, obviously training on an island you’re just getting that competition experience.”

Meanwhile, Rick Bevis, a Canadian coach who joined the Bermuda Volleyball Association on a six-month arrangement, will be helping the national teams prepare for the CAC Games.

Brevis is an International Volleyball Federation instructor and Canadian national coach evaluator.

“We have coach Rick Bevis and he is an FIVB certified trainer,” McPeek added.

“He arrived on April 3 and he will be here for a six-month stint. So he’s deeply involved with our national teams.

“I’ll be working with him running these qualifier tournaments. It’s a huge benefit to have him around, he actually did two short contracts last year.

“He has a massive resume and has coached for a long time, even at Olympic level. I was coaching the men’s team till he got here, so now he’ll be taking over a lot of that.

“Between him and I, we’ll be splitting the men’s and the women’s teams going forward.”