Honduras debuts with victory over Costa Rica at AFECAVOL U23

Honduras debuts with victory over Costa Rica at AFECAVOL U23

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala, September 16, 2018. - Honduras defeated Costa Rica 3-0 (25-21, 25-17, 25-23) in their debut at the Men’s U23 AFECAVOL Central American Championship at Teodoro Palacios Flores Gymnasium in Guatemala City.

Costa Rica edged Honduras in set one with 8-2 advantage but it didn’t take long for Honduras to recover and win the first two sets with a solid performance. Costa Rica continued to push hard but Honduras recovered from a three point deficit (17-20) to finish in three sets.

Honduras held advantage in spikes (35-29) and blocks (10-5); both teams scored two points on aces. Honduras committed 25 unforced errors and Costa Rica with 28.

On Monday, Honduras (1-0) will face Belize and Costa Rica (0-1) will meet El Salvador (0-1).

“We started with strength because we consider Costa Rica to be one of the favorites to win the tournament” started saying Alejandro Avila captain of Honduras; “we dedicated our last week of practice to this first match; we studied Costa Rica well. In the third set Costa Rica was always on top, we started to keep the ball on our side and followed our coaches’ instructions to win while directing better our attacks” he added.

Cuban Juan Andres Leon, coach of Honduras said “we work the mental part of the game and we look for the athlete to commit to the game; this is a hard work and today we can see the result because we took Costa Rica’s resilience calmly; they are a really good and respectful team. I observed and studied Costa Rica in the first set, that’s why things turned out well for us”.

Costa Rica’s captain Jason Brown said it’s complicated to start a tournament with a loss “but it’s just the beginning, and we performed pretty well. My team showed strength but we weren’t consistent. I thing we lost focus after the comfortable advantage in the first set, we were over confident”.

Juan Acuña, head coach of Costa Rica said Juan Leon is really good “he is one of the best Cuban coaches that have been in Central America. The result is tricky because both teams were similar in their performance. My players lost the advantage of the start and from their forward the match was hard for them because of the imprecisions. Costa Rica was solid and we have to minimize our errors for the next match”.