Peru sweeps Puerto Rico and improves to 2-1

TIJUANA, Mexico, June 20, 2010 – Peru improved its Pool B record to 2-1 following a straight-sets (25-21, 25-22, 25-14) victory over Puerto Rico in the Women’s Pan American Cup on Sunday. The losers dropped to a 1-2 mark.

The Peruvians took advantage of many opponent service errors in the first set and then came back from a six-point deficit (16-10) in the second.

Peru gave away 12 points on errors while Puerto Rico committed 28. The winners had a 12-8 advantage in blocks and a 6-0 margin in aces.

Jessenia Uceda paced Peru with 12 points and Patricia Soto and Leyla Chihuan contributed with 8 apiece. Puerto Rican Sarai Alvarez had 13 points while Tatiana Encarnacion, Stephanie Enright and Alexandra Oquendo each charted 8 points.

“It was a lot easier than we expected,” Chihuan said. “I mean, you train to win but to score a 3-0 against a NORCECA team is more than we had in mind. Now our goal is to be in the Final Four and in one of the top three here.”

“I am very happy with the victory and with our come back in the second set,” said Yong Kim, the Korean coach of Peru. “We avenged the loss of last year in Miami.”

“They dominated us in every aspect of the game and we made too many errors,” Puerto Rican Vilmarie Mojica said. “It was a bad game for us.”