Dominicans swept Nicaragua and will play the finals at the U23 Pan American Cup

HAVANA, Cuba, July 14, 2023.- Dominicnas remained undefeated sweeping Nicaragua 25-16, 25-14 and 25-18 to seal their spot in the finals of the V U23 Men’s Pan American Cup and their berth to the 2025 Junior Pan American Games.

Dominican Republic has one match tomorrow of the preliminary round, against Cuba, the other undefeated team and earned their early qualification to the gold medal match and to the Junior continental Games.

The winners, in one hour, marked the difference in attacks 32-28, in blocks 9-5 and in serves 9-0 with the outstanding performance of opposite Adrián José Figueroa, the top scorer with 15, the only one with double digits.

Dante Mañón, Dominican coach, expressed “we are glad because we achieved the mission of reaching the finals and the berth to the 2025 Junior Pan American Games. Tomorrow it will be a filler match, we will take off that weight, so now we prepare for Sunday to play for the gold against Cuba”.

Middle blocker Moisés Ortiz said “Nicaragua gave us a good match. We always had in mind that they are a team with short height, and we needed to block them always on the diagonal side and that made our win easier. We also adjusted the defense, the passing, and the high and fast balls because of their short height they don’t have enough reach. We feel happy for our work and our sacrifice, and for our coaching staff efforts”.

José Luis Mena, head coach of Nicaragua, expressed “we played against Dominican Republic the last time we were here, and we won, because we know each other well we should’ve had more energy, but the guys were too impressed. Sometimes we understand our opponent’s system of play and we commit too many errors, because their height didn’t have an effect on us but it was our lack of concentration the entire game, we failed too many serves. We weren’t facing Cuba”.

DT de Nicaragua, expresó que “con Dominicana jugamos la vez pasada y ganamos, como ya nos conocemos debimos haber jugado con más ánimo, pero los muchachos estaban muy impresionados. A veces entendemos la

Central American middle Rafael Hernández said “our energy wasn’t up to the game, we committed too many errors on the court that we should get rid of in the future, but despite that, most of us have improved our level during the tournament. Tomorrow we must leave it all on the court against Peru in this preliminary round-robin competition”.