Bermuda maintained their perfect start at the Eastern Caribbean Volleyball Association Championships by defeating Dominica 3-0 in British Virgin Islands today.

Having taken down champions St Lucia 3-2 in a thrilling five-set encounter the night before, Gary LeBlanc’s side were made to work hard by Dominica. They won triumphed 25-22, 25-22, 31-29.

Bermuda men lost their opening match 3-1 to Dominica on Wednesday, then fought from a set down, 18-25, to overcome the host nation 25-21, 25-17, 25-20 for a 3-1 victory tonight and register their first win of the competition.

Natalie Gazzard, the Bermuda women’s captain, commended the collective hard work put in by the team to achieve the two victories.

“I’m extremely proud of the effort, resilience and teamwork shown by the entire team,” Gazzard told The Royal Gazette.

“Since we’ve faced St Lucia twice in the finals prior to this tournament, we knew it was going to be a battle.

They are a great team and always a tough opponent. As a team, we collectively showed up, played great volleyball and persevered to earn the win against them.

“Heading into the match against Dominica, we knew it would be another tough challenge, especially with the quick turnaround.

“However, our team showed tremendous maturity, strong fundamental skills and the determination to fight through fatigue. Everyone stepped up and played great volleyball.”

Gazzard credited the team’s success to the hours of work they poured into preparations before heading to Tortola.

“It’s definitely been a process,” she said.

“Over the summer, we’ve been training really hard and you just got to have a ‘nothing touches the ground’ mindset, and I think we really followed through with that.”

LeBlanc commended his team’s focus across both matches, noting that they successfully used lessons from their previous clashes with St Lucia to get the better of the champions.

“We knew going into the match versus St Lucia, it was going to be very tough,” the coach said.

“Once we settled in, we relied on our training and lessons learnt from our previous outings against them, resulting in a match win to begin the tournament.

“Going into our second match, we knew it would not be easy since we played last night. Dominica were a tough opponent and the most important thing for us was to remain focused throughout which resulted in a second match win.

“We are extremely proud of the girls and looking forward to a small rest as we prepare for our next match.”

Bermuda men’s captain Eron Woods thought dictating the pace was key to their win.

“I think we really tried to focus on controlling the pace of the game,” Woods said.

“In the match against Dominica, they dominated the pace. So we wanted to control it, play at our pace, we wanted to speed up and that’s what we chose to do.

“We knew it was going to be a noisy crowd. There was a lot of noise that wasn’t coming from outside of the stand, but we pushed through it.”

Coach Mike Smith was also pleased with the team’s response, recovering from the loss to Dominica to record victory over BVI.

“The first set didn’t go as planned,” he said.

“We just dropped a few balls, made way too many mistakes, then corrected them and played our game.

“It’s basically what we set out to do and we executed. Our players haven’t been at a competition like this before, so there were a lot of nerves in that first game and it was a pretty tough team.

“A lot of respect for Dominica, they played really well. We earned every point that we got from them and I think it was a great learning experience for our guys.”

Bermuda teams are back in action against Anguilla on day three of the competition tomorrow. The men play at noon, before the women take the court at 6pm in search of a third straight victory.