USA gold, Canada silver at NORCECA championships

GATINEAU, Canada, August 21, 2010 – Maurice Torres scored a game high 14 points to lead the U.S., to a 25-14, 25-19, 25-16 victory over Canada in the gold medal final at the NORCECA junior men’s volleyball championships played before a full house at the Centre Sportif.

It is the first time the U.S., has won the tournament for North and Central America and the Carribean which started in 1998 and is held every two years.

“This victory means absolutely everything to us,” said Maurice Torres, who led the U.S., with 14 points.  “There’s nothing more you can do than win a gold medal.  We play as a team.  There’s not one or two of us, there’s 12 of us.  That’s the best system you can have.”

“I was proud of our effort this week and tonight,” said U.S., head coach John Hawks.  “They executed the game plan, they are smart players and just a really fun group of guys to coach.”

Nicholas Hoag led Canada with 12 points.  The Canadians, also silver medalists in 2008, had their best set in the second but a six point U.S., run midway through was too hard to make-up.

“The U.S. really came to play and we just got out played today,” said Justin Olmstead, who added seven points.  “Our plan was to stick to what we we’ve doing all week and keep that block stable.  But they made it tough on us and we wound up making a lot of errors.

The Canadian team was only together for less than a month but managed to win its pool in the round robin then pull off the upset of the tournament by defeating the three-time defending champions Cuba.  The U.S., Canada and Puerto, which beat Cuba for the bronze earlier on Saturday, also gained spots for next year’s world championships in Brazil.

It was a great tournament for us,” said Canada’s head coach Greg Barthel. “It just hurts right now but I’m sure later we’ll appreciate what we accomplished here.  I think it will just make us hungrier for next year at the world juniors.

“We fell behind early and once they get ahead they start beaming into their serves.  It becomes harder to pass and they simply played a good game.”