SALTILLO, Coahuila, July 22, 2008.- The gratitude for all the hospitality received was the unanimous comment from the coaches of the eight teams competing in the U-20 NORCECA Women’s Continental Tournament, a qualifier to the 2009 World Championship.

Paula Weishoff, USA: “We have a very young team, I have three players with experience, but the rest will be debuting, we had two weeks of preparation and we are excited about the start.”

Norman Bouchard, Canada: “This is the first time I coach a national team so it is a challenge for me and my athletes, I have very young players, but with great potencial and I think these competitions improve their game’s level for them to reach the senior team in the future.”

Joel Olazabal, Cuba: “This is also a very young team because we are presenting only three players in the last year of the category, one of them was with the Olympic training team and other two were present at the 2008 Pan American Cup of Tijuana ’08, they really have potencial and we are hoping to battle for the qualification, we have prepared for two years to achieve that goal.”

Luis Garcia, Puerto Rico: “It is the same for us, we have a squad with little international experience, not very tall but with great control of the game’s fundamental and colective work, and like the other teams we will battle for the qualification to the World.”

Enrique Larrazaleta, Dominican Republic: “We have four players of the preceding category, the youth, of their final year, a month ago we could organize the whole group because they were divided and our goal is to reach the qualification.”

Julio Cesar Alfaro, Costa Rica: “We are going to rely on seven youth players and five juniors with little international experience, with the resources my country has we are comino to give our best and I am looking for a great effort from my team and if we are in the elite now, our goal is to improve more with each day.”

Daryl Davis, Trinidad and Tobago: “I am debuting in this function replacing Cuban Francisco Cruz and with a young team that is comino up from the youth category. Since three months ago we worked looking for players for this tournament and because of it a great performance can’t be expected.”

Samuel Ciprian, Mexico: “As the rest this is also a young team, a combination of the group who recently took part in the just completed youth tournament in Puerto Rico, two of 14 years-old, we had to know how to combine for having a good representation because even the fact we are secured of a place in the World due to our condition of hosting country, we have the commitment to prepare well, though some of them have taken part in international events of their age, they could not work together, only for two weeks, and our goal is to have a team with ball control because we don’t have the same physical characteristics of our opponent teams.”