USA get ticket to the Norceca U18 Final and FIVB World Championship

TIJUANA, Mexico, August 10, 2012 — The United States qualified to the Finals at the Norceca Women’s U18 Continental Championship, after beating Puerto Rico 3-1 (26-24, 25-13, 19-25, 25-13).

Carli Snyder totalized 25 points  (2 aces, 4 blocks) for USA. Also with double digits finished Simone Lee (3 aces) and Christian Jones, who recorded 18 and 10 points respectively. For Puerto Rico, Genesis Miranda was the top scorer with 18 tallies, followed by Paola Rojas with 9.

“We had our ups and downs. We made a lot of mistakes and you cannot win against a team like that, with a good level. For some moments we made two points, gave the service and more mistakes, too many against a very consistent team like USA,” said Puerto Rico’s coach Víctor Vázquez.

“I think it was a good match but we could not mantain our game level. They increased it and our mistakes costed us to lose the match but we still have one more chance”, said captain Wilmarie Rivera about Puerto Rico.

Despite the result, for USA captain Taylor Tashima it was a difficult match. “We are in the finals. It didn’t come easy, Puerto Rico played really hard in the third set. We were able to come back and I am really happy about it,” she indicated.

American coach reed Sunahara stated:  “It is a relief to get in to the world championship and to get in to the finals. We played pretty well but we had some let downs in the third set. We have to get better at that for tomorrow and we’ll see what happens.”

With this result USA is practically in the FIVB U18 World Championship, that will be played next year in Thailand.