Maldonado fires 33 to help Mexico finish on a high

August 27, 2025.- With an impressive 33 points from opposite Sofia Maldonado, Mexico outlasted Colombia in a five-set battle in the last game for both teams at the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship in Thailand.

On Wednesday, the Mexicans scored their first Pool F win in Chiang Mai to finish third in the pool standings and leave their South American opponents bottom of the table winless.

Colombia managed to fight their way back from a set down twice during their last game in Thailand, but in the end, Mexico celebrated a 3-2 (25-22, 22-25, 25-23, 18-25, 15-12) victory to leave the tournament on a high note.

Sofia Maldonado hit 31 points in attack at a 53% success rate, including the match winner, and put up three kill blocks to emerge as the best scorer of the game. 22-year-old outside hitter Melanie Parra contributed another 18 points, including one ace and four kill blocks. Overall, the Mexican team piled up an impressive number of 17 kill blocks in the game, against seven from Colombia, and that made the biggest difference in the match. As many as nine of those stuffs were authored by middle blocker and captain Jocelyn Urias, who finished with a total of 11 points.

“It feels amazing! We started really well in our first games, but we couldn’t really get that win, because China and the Dominican Republic are very good teams, but we knew we had to come strong in this game, because it was going to be a big fight, and we are glad that we took the win,” Urias told.

“We had to keep very calm as we had to keep fighting for every point. Maybe we were motivated, and we knew we had to come here with a lot of energy.”

Colombia made a lot fewer unforced errors than Mexico (19-29) and also outperformed the opponents in serving by 7-2 in aces but stopped just short of finding their way to their first ever World Championship victory and stayed winless across the eight matches played at this and at the previous editions.