The Santjoaneres fulfilled their promise not to appear in the first game of the final series of the Women’s Superior Volleyball League (LVSF), after having suffered a setback Court of Appeals and Sports Arbitration (TAAD) of the Olympic Committee of Puerto Rico (Copur), in the event that they request the replacement due to injury of the American player Destinee Hooker.
Faced with this, the director of the tournament, José Servera-Rivera, announced that the team is exposed to a year of suspension for violating Article 1 of the Discipline Code of the tournament. Subsection H of this article condemns the “failure to attend a route game without a just cause.”
In another statement, Servera Rivera said that when he received the summons from the Court of First Instance, he was not ordered to suspend the game that was scheduled for 8:00 pm on Saturday. Therefore, he warned that if the Sanjuaneras did not play, the provisions of the Constitution and Regulations of the Puerto Rican Volleyball Federation, as well as those of the Tournament Regulations, would be applied “with all rigor”.
At 8:00 the Caguas Creoles came out on the court, but the San Juan team was not at the coliseum.
Hooker’s departure is due to the fact that the attacking spike is in her 18th week of pregnancy and that the specialist who treated her recommended that she leave the season to understand that the athlete is a case of other risk.
The representative of the Sanjuaneras, the engineer Marc Martínez, has reiterated on Friday that he will go to the “last consequences” following the decision of the TAAD, which was his third appeal in the process of reaching a solution. The case had been resolved in the same way when it was seen by the director of the LVSF Tournament, Josep “Picky” Servera and then by the president of the Puerto Rican Volleyball Federation (FPV), Dr. César Trabanco.