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Power hitters Romel Lightbourne and Prince Wilson led the charge for Team Bahamas early on, but their inexperience as a team was never more evident than it was on Wednesday night at the Kendal G.L. Isaacs National Gymnasium.

In front of a raucous home crowd, the Bahamian men fell in straight sets, 20-25, 21-25 and 21-25 to a Haitian team that continued to turn heads at the 11th BTC Caribbean Volleyball Confederation (CVC) Championships. With the loss, the Bahamian men now have no chance of advancing in the tourney, much to the dismay of vocal team leader, libero player Audril Farquharson.

"It was a game that we could have won but I guess the inexperience of the team and the fact that we don't travel to much tournaments showed. We have a young team and we don't have that much experienced players at the senior level," said Farquharson. "Haiti wasn't hitting real hard but they are a very disciplined team. They were executing, and even if they play bad, they managed to put the ball over the net and make minor mistakes. We made too many errors and it all leads back to inexperience and not traveling to many tournaments. I give it up to Haiti because they really fought for the game and they won," he added.

After Haiti got The Bahamas off guard and took the first set, the home town crowd did all they could to push the young team to a second set win. Amidst a sea of Bahamian flags with junkanoo music crowding the stadium air, the energetic Farquharson pumped the squad up and got them out to the 14-12 lead. That lead was short-lived however as the Haitians began to pour it on offensively by finding holes in the Bahamian defence. Lightbourne, and power hitter Arison Wilson began to get in the flow of things late in the set with a series of kills, but by then it was too late and Haiti had the set wrapped up.

In what turned out to be the final set, Team Bahamas again jumped out to an early lead (7-5), only to make too many errors when it mattered the most. Ralph Adolphe, who finished with 13 points, Frantz Joseph, who added nine points and Vladimir Louis who had two big blocks down the stretch, simply refused to let Haiti lose in front of a group of their own excited fans.

For The Bahamas, Lightbourne had 11 points, and Wilson was the second highest scorer with eight points.

Tony Simon, who had a massive kill in the second set for team Bahamas and did his part to motivate his teammates, also touched on the inexperience of the squad.

"We cannot wait until the last minute or couple months before to prepare for a tournament. We need to prepare a year in advance and travel and play a lot because it all comes into play. The loss is very disappointing because we really wanted to get to the next round. I felt like we needed to play more defence and we didn't," he said.

For The Bahamas, the loss comes after a heart breaking 17-25, 25-20, 26-28, 25-23, 12-15 five-set loss to Guadeloupe; the same squad that Haiti handed a 26-24 25-23, 15-12 beating on Tuesday. Both the men and women squads faced off against Barbados last night, but those results were unavailable up to press time.

The men would have needed a tremendous effort to get past the defending champions, Bajans, who improved to 3-0 on Wednesday with a straight set victory over Guadeloupe. The women, on the other hand, were looking to advance in their pool and improve to 2-1 with a win over the Bajan ladies.

After opening up the tourney with a four-set win over Haiti, the Bahamian ladies were annihilated in their second match against volleyball giants Trinidad & Tobago on Tuesday in straight sets.