Bermuda’s women’s beach volleyball team have become the first of the island’s representatives to compete at this year’s Central American and Caribbean Games.

The team of Lisa LeBlanc and Meghan Calhoun got their tournament under way against the Dominican Republic pair of Julibeth Payano and Bethania Almanzar but they found the going tough.

LeBlanc and Calhoun lost 21-4 in both sets to their experienced opponents with coach Federica Tonon, who was hired for three months to help Bermuda’s volleyball programme, was not too downcast with the performance against one of the tournament’s best teams.

“We played one of the toughest teams in the tournament who are probably going for a medal,” Tonon said.

“They are experienced, they train consistently through the year and in Bermuda it’s been raining for the past four weeks so the preparation has been challenging for this event.

“Lisa has also had a knee problem so she couldn’t do full training for some time, but the mood is good. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.”

Bermuda’s next Group B match is secheduled to take place against Suriname on Thursday but that match could be in doubt after the Suriname team failed to fulfil their first fixture against Colombia on Wednesday. If it does go ahead, Tonon is confident the match will be much closer.

“The match against Suriname will be a chance to bring home the first win and we are all looking forward to that,” Tonon said.

“We still have a lot of matches left to play. Even if we lose tomorrow, we will still play more matches against teams who are not going for a medal so we can compete to finish in the best position we can at this tournament.

“That’s good to have because you don’t get many chances as a small country to go abroad and compete against other teams, so this is a good chance to get some more games in your pocket and gain experience to use it in future events.”