21 Pan Am Cup continues as Chile falls to Puerto Rico

FORT MCMURRAY, Canada, May 17, 2017 - In Wednesday’s opening match at the U21 Pan American Cup at the Syncrude Sport and Wellness Centre at Keyano College in Fort McMurray, Chile met Puerto Rico.

The Chileans fell 1-3 (25-23, 12-25, 21-25, 10-25) to their Caribbean opponents.

In what was the closest match of the tournament so far, Chile had a solid comeback in the first set to win 25-23.  However, in the second set Puerto Rico re-gained its composure to dominate the set 25-12, and didn’t really look back from there.

Angel Melendez, head coach of Puerto Rico said: “We tried to be strong on service and I think that is what gave us the victory. And we stuck to our plan of taking care of defense and neutralizing their middle.”

Opposite Gabriel Garcia was a dominant force for Puerto Rico with 19 points (including five from his service), and his teammate Ivan Fernandez had 11 points.

Head coach of Chile Daniel Nejamkin felt his team improved since their loss yesterday to Cuba. 

“We played pretty well at the beginning of the game, at least the first set and then we were not able to play at the level we thought we would play. Today, Puerto Rico was way better than us. But we were certainly better than yesterday,” explained Nejamkin.

Middle Blocker Bastian Fuentes was Chile’s top contributor with 15 total.