Sensational Guillen leads Dominican victory over Russia

ROSARIO, Argentina, August 26, 2017 - As in their wildest dreams, Dominican Republic pulled out a tremendous semifinal win over Russia to enter FIVB Volleyball Girls’ U18 World Championship gold medal match with a score of 3-0 (25-17, 28-26, 25-21).

Dominican star Madeline Guillen uncorked 22 points distributed among all elements of the game, while captain Natalia Martinez was also fantastic with 16 tallies. Russia had to deal with a low spiking ratio along the game and the only player above the overall numbers of the team was Valeriya Shevchuk, with 16 points.

The massive 3-0 win of Dominican Republic over Russia was not only a reason for ecstasy for coach Alexandre Ceccato and some of the players, as they also admitted the quota of surprise about their very high levels of play.

Alexandre Ceccato, Dominican Republic coach: “I am a bit surprised with how we play - we played better than them, the only 3-0 that I have thought was for Russia but we made few mistakes and took the victory. Tomorrow we will face the candidate, Italy is clearly the favourite. Now we will celebrate and after that we will start thinking on how to beat Italy.”

Natalia Martínez, Dominican Republic captain: “As a team we never dreamt with a victory like this; we knew that we needed to make a few mistakes and avoid their block. Nobody worked harder than us to get ready for this, we deserve this. Now we need to give our best and cheer each other to defeat Italy and to represent our country with pride.”