Canada to semifinal after beating Barbados

HAVANA, Cuba, August 30, 2018 - The Canadian national team finished the challenge against Barbados in straight sets (25-13, 25-14, 25-20) in just one hour to complete the semifinals of the Norceca Sub Tournament -21 Volleyball male.

The Canadians will fight tomorrow with Cuba the winner of group A, while the Dominicans will face the leader of the B and defending champion, United States.

For the winning team today they got double digits from the opposite Alexandre Nsakanda (17) and corner players Braedon Friesen and Coltyn Liu, who added 10 each, while for the Caribbean the top scorer was Akeel Stoute with 7.

The superiority of the northerners is reflected in all fundaments with a difference of 33-20 in attack, 10-3 in blocking and 14-2 in services. They committed more unforced errors (22-18).

The Brazilian Joao Paulo Bravo, coach of Canada, said that "we gave everyone the opportunity to play, although today's result was very important we saw that we could do it, we have 12 men that we know we can count on them at the necessary time. We played well, focused on the reception and doing the required, for me fundamental, yesterday we lost but today we could win and that is vital for the group."

"Tomorrow is another clash, we are going to study Cuba, it is a very strong team, we have to know how to face them, we cannot fight against their physic because they are superior, we have to be a little more awake, more intelligent".

Captain Michael Dowhaniuk said that "we played better, with control from the start and so the challenge was easier, but we faced the match as we should, as if it was the last and we had to win it until the end".

For its part, the opposite of Barbados, Ashe Oxley said that "the Canadians play very well, I think we could do better but we tried to overcome their blockade but it was not possible, these stops represent a great experience, we face opponents who have quality and they are very high, we always learn".

His coach John Stuart pointed out that "we knew that Canada is a very difficult team and we had a lot of problems with the reception because of the strong serve of them and we could not organize the complex one to be able to attack them strongly".

For the penultimate day the program features the matches for the positions fifth to the eighth between Guatemala-Nicaragua (12:00 hours) and Haiti-Barbados (14:00) and the semifinals of the United States-Dominican Republic (16:00) and Canada-Cuba (18:00).