Chile moves in first ever Pan American Cup semifinal  

COLIMA, Mexico, June 19, 2019. - Chile moved in their first ever Pan American Cup semifinal beating Puerto Rico in quarterfinals 3-0 (25-19, 25-22, 25-21) of the fourteenth edition of the event currently taking place in Colima, Mexico.

Chile’s well organized performance, with velocity changes subdued a young Puerto Rican squad that managed long rallies in their strong effort to move further. Chile will face Cuba in Thursday’s semifinal, while Puerto Rico plays until Friday for fifth place against United States.

Chile held 42-36 advantage in attacks, 6-2 in blocks and scored on 25 opponent errors, allowing 21 point errors. Both teams finished with 2 aces.

Once again Vicente Parraguirre led Chile’s attackers scoring 16 points on 14 kills, one block and one ace. Middle blocker Simon Guerra and captain Dusan Bonacic scored 9 points each for the winning effort. Pelegrin Vargas scored 14 points on 12 kills and 2 aces on Puerto Rico’s side.

Comments:

Vicente Parraguirre, top scorer Chile: “We are very happy, reaching the semifinals was our goal before coming here, but what is most important is doing it playing well, a culmination of many years of hard work. Tomorrow against Cuba we will play with everything we have to finish victors”.

Daniel Nejamkin, coach Chile: “What’s most important for us is showing good volleyball, our main goal is performing well and we are glad to advance to semifinals. This has been a process since my arrival to Chile back in 2010 and we dreamt with positive results but we are looking for a good performance for the Pan American Games. It will be tough facing Cuba, if we can play at our level we will be satisfied. Our best feature has been our solid performance which has been developing throughout the tournament”.