Dominicans qualified unbeaten to semifinals after beating Canada

TRUJILLO, Peru, July 9, 2019 - The fans in Trujillo enjoyed a vibrant encounter on Tuesday afternoon between two Norceca and League of Nations competitive teams as the Dominican Republic and Canada were pitted together with the victory for the Caribbean team by a dramatic 3-2 (25-18, 25-27, 21-25, 25-14, 15-13).

 Dominican won the first set with his fulminating attack. But, Canada woke up in the next two sets, and despite the effort in blocking the winning team, the Canadians were superior with the variety of their offense and serve.

In the fourth set, the Caribbean team took advantage of the tiredness of the rival, and managed to extend the game to the fifth set and score their fourth consecutive victory. With this result, Marcos Kwiek's team accumulated 14 points and secured their unbeaten run to the semifinals.

The best scorer of the Dominican team was Bethania de la Cruz with 25 points followed by Brayelin Martinez with 14 and Annerys Valdez with 10. On the other side of the net, Alexa Lea Gray recorded 26 points, Kiera Van Ryk 14, Jennifer Cross 12 and Andrea Mitrovic 11

The Dominicans were superior in blocking (13-11), but the Canadians did better work in attack (48-54) and service (8-10). Canada yielded to the Dominican Republic 42 points in unforced errors, while the winners reduced them to 22.

 Top scorer Dominican, Bethania de la Cruz: Both teams risked a lot with the serve and maybe that's why we had so many mistakes. Canada is a good team, with tall players, but we came with desire to beat them and with a lot of team work we were victorious. We are happy to be undefeated, but we are working day by day and we hope to maintain the good rhythm in the games that are coming.

Canada's top scorer, Lea Gray: We did good things and bad things, but we did our best. Dominicana is a team with a lot of experience, they come from the League of Nations and they knew how to define in the counterattack.

On the last day of the preliminary round, Canada will play at 4:00 p.m. against Guatemala and at 8:00 p.m. Dominican Republic will measure forces against Peru.