De la Cruz: The best is yet to come
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, May 2, 2020 – Bethania De La
Cruz has a long and storied career with the Dominican Republic
national team, but the 32-year-old outside hitter strongly
believes the best is yet to come.
A member of the Dominican national team since 2005, De La Cruz
has helped the Caribbean nation secure impressive results at the
international level over the last 15 years, including a
fifth-place finish at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, gold at the
2019 Pan-American Games and multiple victories at NORCECA
Championships and the Pan-American Cup.
The veteran outside hitter is excited about the team and
confident they can reach even higher levels at next year's Tokyo
Olympics.
“I think that over the last few years we showed the world how
much we’ve improved,” she said in an interview with Brazilian
journalist Bruno Voloch on his Instagram account. “We have
played really well against the top teams in the world and even
when we didn’t get to win the match our performance had a lot of
positives. We’re going to Tokyo with the goal of fighting for a
medal, that’s our dream. It’s been delayed, but is more alive
than ever.”
A key factor in the Dominican team's transformation, De La Cruz
says, has been Brazilian Marcos Kwiek, who took over as head
coach in 2008. Since then, the outside hitter believes, the
Dominicans have shown steady progress.
“I think anyone can tell the impact he had in our team, it’s
very noticeable,” she said about the Brazilian. “I think the
main thing he brought to us was the understanding that we needed
to cut our mistakes in order to be competitive.”
De La Cruz has, undoubtedly, been an important part in the
recent Dominican success as well. The powerful spiker, who has
played professionally in Puerto Rico, Japan, Korea, Tukey,
Italy, Indonesia and Russia, has helped the team with her
impressive scoring potential, winning Most Valuable Player
awards at both the 2019 Pan-American Games and the 2020 NORCECA
Olympic qualifier.
Alongside fellow outside hitter Prisilla Rivera, opposite
Brayelin Martinez, libero Brenda Castillo and setter Niverka
Marte she forms the backbone of the reigning NORCECA champions’
formation.
De La Cruz has been one of the symbols of arguably the greatest
generation of Dominican players and she thinks their mission
with the team won’t be over after the Tokyo Games. And, more
importantly, that even when they do decide to walk away, the
team will remain in good hands with players like the Martinez
sisters and Yonkaira Peña able to step up to new
responsibilities. |