Guatemala ends in seventh place

LIMA, Peru, August 19, 2018 - Guatemala won the battle for the seventh place by overcoming Costa Rica by 3-2 (20-25, 20-25, 29-27, 25-17, 15-9) at the Manuel Bonilla Coliseum of Miraflores.

For Guatemala, the top attacker Maria Villagran exceeded the two digits getting the maximum of 22 points; María García and Astrid González added 19 and 10 points. For Costa Rica, the individual score was led by Edya Espinoza with 16 points, while Isayana Soto, Ariana Porras and Susan Alpizar recorded 12, 11 and 10 points, respectively.

The team of William Fernandez won in 53 points of attack, compared to 44 by the Costa Rican team. Guatemala took the advantage in blocks (11-8) and services (10-6), registering a total of 45 unforced errors against 35 of their rivals.

William Fernandez, coach of Guatemala: "For us the first four games were for learning as we knew the game against Costa Rica would be key because they always have won the U23 in Central America. For us it is very important especially that the team knew how to recover after be two sets down ".

Astrid González, captain of Guatemala: "We are very happy because we knew how to react, follow the instructions of our coach and win. This victory for us is as if we had won the tournament, it is creating history since it is the first time we beat Costa Rica in a long time and it serves us a lot of preparation for the Central American Games that will be in Honduras at the end of the year".

César Salas, coach of Costa Rica: "This has been a great experience for our girls, especially thinking about the generation new players that we are projecting for the volleyball of our country. We are sure that the game we have had will be very useful for the Central American Games."

Edya Espinoza, captain of Costa Rica: "We fell into errors of lack of concentration and anxiety to win and they took advantage of that. Although we could not get a win, each of my teammates made a great effort to be here and we took a very important lesson for our next competitions.”