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GUADALAJARA, Mexico, April 6, 2010 - The Puerto
Rican team recovered from an early stumbling,
and managed to impose its level to Curacao, thus
achieving their first win 3-0 (25-22, 25-11 and
25-13) in the opening day of the NORCECA
Continental U-19 Championship.
The competition secures one ticket to the Youth
Olympic Games Singapore 2010 and two spots for
the World Championship on the same category for
2011. After a slow start in the first set, the
Puerto Ricans improved their game thanks to
better blocking and taller players.
The Puerto Rican team, which has good service,
failed today in that matter; nonetheless,
dominated in 1 hour and 7 minutes, with the best
players being Carlos Acosta, with 12 points, and
Christian Rivera, with 10.
On the Curacao team, the smallest team next to
Guatemala (1.77 m), the top player was Jurcham
Meulens with only 6 points.
Ramon Lawrence, coach of Puerto Rico, stated,
“Always for the first match we have these kinds
of issues, when you don’t know the level of
competition. We were a little bit nervous when
the game began, but we started to relax because
my team is a better team than what they showed
today”.
“For us, there’s no easy competitor, so we will
be careful against the Dominicans on Thursday,
because it’s a decisive match for leading the
group and we have to go much focused against
them”.
Leito Urvin, head of the Curacao team, was very
happy of the way his team was playing in the
beginning, “but Puerto Rico has more approach
and we couldn’t handle their blocking. Even so,
our goal is to go very far and we will reach it
with experiences like this one”.
Captain Anthony Quinten indicated, “We were
nervous, but we could’ve played better than we
did”.
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