United States Zooms Past St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Colorado Springs, USA, August 28, 2012 - The United States was too much for St. Vincent and the Grenadines in a 25-8, 25-8, 25-9 victory Tuesday evening to improve to 2-0 in Pool A of the NORCECA Men’s Junior Continental Championship taking place at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

USA, the tournament’s defending champion, will challenge Mexico (2-0) on Wednesday evening in a match-up of undefeated teams. The winner of the match will advance directly to the semifinal round on Friday and skip the quarterfinal round. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (0-2) meets Honduras (0-2) at 13:00 on Wednesday as both teams search for their first victories.

Michael Henchy sparked the United States with 12 points, followed by teammate Driss Guessous with eight points.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines was led by Ijahlon Butler with five points and Jahmal Small added four points.

The United States produced a 9-0 block advantage to go with a 5-0 margin in aces. The Americans limited their errors to 12 for the match and benefited from 27 St. Vincent and the Grenadines errors.

 “We would like to congratulate St. Vincent and the Grenadines on a well-played match, and it has been a pleasure to have them here at the NORCECA Championship in Colorado Springs,” United States head coach Peter Hanson said. “By having them here and playing, they will get better making NORCECA as a region even stronger. Tonight it was good for us to play everyone and rest some players. Now we will start to prepare for Mexico and for the playoffs after that.”

“First of all I want to congratulate St. Vincent and the Grenadines on a good match,” United States captain Micah Christenson said. “Coming into this match we wanted to focus on our side of the net and concentrate on the small things. We are excited to play versus Mexico. We had a couple good matches against them in the past the youth level at Pan Am and NORCECA.”

“Going into this match we had a lot to think about in playing a strong team in the USA,” St. Vincent and the Grenadines captain Ijahlon Butler said. “We decided to go in and try hard and do our best. Hopefully next time we can give them a better match. Tonight our reception was off. We will concentrate on correcting our errors on reception in tomorrow’s match and do our best.”

“We would like to congratulate the USA on a well-deserved win as they were the better team,” St. Vincent and the Grenadines head coach Brian Burke said. “We made too many errors and you can’t do that against a team the caliber of the USA. Serving let us down tonight. We started well in each set put could not continue to push the USA. Now we will go back to the drawing board and gym in preparing for Honduras. Both teams are looking for their first wins, so the game is up for grabs. This is our first time in this tournament and some of our guys just started playing a couple months ago.”