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SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, August 20, 2015.- In a game that clenched
teeth the two best teams of the tournament so far met in the
so-called Central American classic, where Costa Rica was able to
react and defeat Guatemala 3-1 (19-25,25-23,25-14, 25-13) at the
Girls’ U-18 AFECAVOL Championship.
Guatemala pocketed the first set to Costa Rica, as the home team
led at the first technical time-out by 8-4.
In the second set, Costa Rica worked thoroughly showing the
match could go to either side, but the top scorer of the match,
Isla Johnson with 20 points, pulled her powerful arm to tie the
match.
Contributing to the winning cause was Susan Alpizar with 15
points, while Guatemala’s Daniela Tornoe and Fernanda Juarez
scored 10 points apiece.
In errors, Costa Rica benefited from Guatemala’s 30 errors while
committing 29. Guatemala was better in blocking 9-4.
Tamara Evans, captain of Costa Rica spoke "I think our team's
attitude was much better; in the first set we very tense while
Guatemala performed much better than us”.
Guatemala´s captain Carmen Gomez said "we knew it was an
important match, we came to win and controlled our nerves, but
in the end our nerves and attitude took the best of us”.
Edgar Callejas coach of Guatemala said "I think the first set we
did specific things well and we attacked Costa Rica’s
weaknesses; in the second set it was much the same but we had
service errors which cost us the set. From there on I think they
were more disciplined applied more and followed the
instructions, and my team was disordered and no good result
comes from that ".
Coach Andrés Lopez of Costa Rica said: “our opponent gave us a
difficult match, and as he said, the second set could have gone
to anyone, we took advantage of their errors which allowed us to
have more order, our strategy was to attack strong but our
Opposite wasn’t performing well, when Cardona got tired we
controlled the match”.
With two more days ahead, the championship is still very tight,
Costa Rica leads with 18 points followed by Honduras with 17 and
will look to defend their position against Guatemala with 15
points, Belize stands in fourth place and will face Costa Rica
on Friday. |
