Suriname wins the Gold in WCH at Cayman Islands

GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands, October 7, 2012.- Suriname won the Gold Medal at the NORCECA-E First Round Tournament of the 2014 FIVB Men’s World Championship defeating Barbados in the final match in five challenging sets (25-22, 18-25, 15-25, 25-20, 15-12).

Suriname had in Verny Vilet Antoine its best scorer with 16 points consisting in 14 attacks, one block and one service point; along with Keven Sporkslede scored 15 points and Marc Flu contributed with 13. Shawn Simpson and Fabian Cox lead Barbados with 25 and 20 points respectively.

Suriname outblocked Barbados 14-11 and scored more service points (6-2), they only lost one match in the round robin phase to Barbados finishing with a 3-1 record.

Roberto Joval admitted that they were prepared for a hard game and looking back they’ve always lost to Barbados in the past, “we had less pressure because we were already qualified to the next round, this was our best game and having the crowds support was helpful.”

Jamaal Nedd congratulated Suriname for a well played game, “we had some good and bad spikes, and we were less consistent in terms of blocking, serving and our defense. We must work harder for future tournaments”

“I want to congratulate Suriname, in this particular match they handled the pressure better than we did, we knew it was a competitive one and Suriname never gave up. Some of our unforced errors cost us the match and we weren’t able to catch up, we lost the momentum. For the next round we must go back home and work on our defense on top of the net and some other areas” said Ludger Niles.

Jerry Slijngard for the winners indicated that team work was one of the main factors that made the difference, “the players followed instructions and we came out for the win keeping in mind that Barbados was the team to beat in this competition, in all it was a very good learning experience as it’s not very often that we get these kind of opportunities to excel”. He gave a special thanks to Aruba’s support cheering for them.