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Edmonton, Canada, January 8, 2015 – Canada’s coach Glenn Hoag
has been at the helm of the men’s national team for almost ten
years now and the veteran skipper sees the NORCECA Men’s Olympic
Qualifier as a chance to realize long time dream.
“The last time we had a volleyball team playing in the Olympics
was in 1992 at Barcelona so winning the tournament at home would
be like a dream for us,” Hoag said on Thursday night. “But we
need to focus on achieving that goal.”
Last year Canada team, currently ranked 10th in the world, had a
perfect 9-0 win-loss record against the teams of Cuba, Puerto
Rico and Mexico they will be facing during the weekend at
Saville Community Sports Centre and are considered strong
candidates to earn the ticket available to Rio de Janeiro Games
in the tournament.
“Winning the competition at home would be great to promote
volleyball in Canada and to motivate the kids to play the game
since we are going to be on national television,” Hoag added.
“We want to show the fans the progress of our team.”
Canada team won their four matches against Puerto Rico, beat
Mexico three times and twice defeated Cuba. They will start the
event facing Mexico on Friday followed by the contest with
Puerto Rico on Saturday before closing the competition on Sunday
against Cuba.
Even though he showed respect for the talented Canadian squad
and their home team advantage, Cuba’s coach Rodolfo Sanchez said
he has not favorites or a special team to beat.
“Canada is a good team and they are playing at home, but the
truth is that you have to win against three teams to earn the
ticket to the Olympics and Canada is one of them,” Sanchez said.
“So I don’t see them as the team to beat.”
Sanchez commented about his team’s preparation for the
tournament and commented about the return of the athletes who
are playing in foreign leagues with authorization from the
national federation.
“We have a pretty young team that has trained very well for this
competition and we hope everything comes out the way we have
planned,” he said. “We started had about 15 days ago and the
players who were playing at foreign leagues joined us. Our goal,
like everybody else, is to earn a ticket to the Olympics.”
Mexico’s Jorge Miguel Azair, who has returned to coach the men’s
team after a season with the ladies squad, has a more modest
goal.
“We are coming here with the illusion of qualifying directly to
the Olympics but that is a big challenge,” Azair commented. “A
good result for us would be a third place because then we would
be playing the intercontinental tournament against Chile and the
second and third placed teams from the African qualifier.”
Javier Gaspar, the coach of Puerto Rico, hopes the up and coming
Maurice Torres, who has been playing brilliantly in the Italian
League, will be able to play to the most of his talent.
“We expect a lot from Maurice Torres, who has been among the top
five offensive players in Italy this season, and also from
Steven Morales, who both are part of our rebuilding process,”
Gaspar said.
Hector Soto, a mainstay in the national team for years, won’t be
with the squad on this occasion after suffering a foot injury
during the national league.
“We just finished the league on December 17 and started to
practice together four days later,” Gaspar said. “We are very
glad to be in this situation with a chance to qualify to the
Olympic whether winning here or in a second chance but you can
tell everybody that we are going to play hard from start to
finish.” |
