The impending arrival of Tropical Storm Florence will see a new World Under-19 Beach Volleyball champion crowned a day earlier.

With high winds potentially hitting the Island as early as Sunday ? the original finals day for the tournament ? organisers have decided to condense the tournament into three days, with the final stages now being played on Horseshoe Bay on Saturday.

Play will begin four hours earlier than originally scheduled today. The first matches are at 9 a.m., and games will follow ten minutes after each other across the six courts rather than being on the hour as they had been during yesterday?s opening day.

Organisers are hopeful the round robin stages will be completed by early afternoon to allow the knockout stage to begin later in the day ? with the quarter-finals onwards taking place tomorrow.

?I have to praise the Bermuda Volleyball Association for the professionalism of their crisis management plan,? said the tournament?s technical supervisor Lori Okimura.

?We have taken the decision to bring forward the finals day to ensure the tournament can still finish. We will not be changing the number of matches, we will not be changing the order of matches but we will change the timings and take advantage of the free mornings we had allowed ourselves.

?Rather than begin matches on the hour, from Friday (today) we will play them after the minimum ten-minute allowance and that way we should be able to get through the scheduled games without any problems.

?We would hope to get as many of the knockout games played as we can so that on Saturday the teams should have to play no more than three times.

?The local organisers are all Bermudian and they know about this sort of thing and the weather here and we have worked with them to provide the best solution for all involved.

?We are not panicking, this is something we have to deal with in the same way that we have dealt with strong winds, extreme heat and even flooding at other FIVB events around the world.?

Okimura, who has been involved with the sport at the top level for 17 years, said that in all her time involved in volleyball, no FIVB tournament had ever not been completed but shortening events from four to three days had happened ?on more than one occasion?.

In the sort of near-perfect weather that made talking about hurricanes seem out of place, 33 games were played yesterday, including a couple of epics on centre court.

A total of nine match points were on offer in the first game of the tournament to go to three sets with American duo Ashley Lee and Kelly Irvin wasting five in their 21-16, 22-24, 16-18 defeat to Italian duo Debora Pini and Laura Giombini.

Despite some incredible recovery play from Irvin, and some great power-hitting from the 16-year-old Lee, the Europeans triumphed in the tie-break, making the most of their fourth match point to claim a remarkable victory after an enthralling game that had kept more than 200 sun-baked spectators fully absorbed.

The girls? match lasted 59 minutes, more than half-an-hour longer than the Bermuda team?s opening salvo in the competition.

Bravely flinging themselves about against Italian qualifiers Francesco Giontelli and Nicolai Paulo, the home pair of Matthew Sinclair and Ian Bucci failed to get any rhythm and were beaten 21-2, 21-4 in a hopelessly one-sided game.

Out of their depth against national champions, all but one of their points was from an Italian mistake, the Bermuda pair still left the court smiling after what Sinclair described as ?an amazing experience?.

In their second game against French pair Renaud Ventresque and Brice Thesee, the plucky pair went down 21-1, 21-3.