Dominicans’ strong service downed Peruvians

Havana, Cuba, March 18, 2015 – The Dominican Republic rolled to a 3-0 (25-15, 25-9, 25-14) victory over Peru to stay undefeated after two outings in Pool A at the III U18 Girls’ Pan American Cup on Wednesday. The losers dropped their mark to 1-1.

The Dominicans sealed the triumph in just 66 minutes with a consistent game led by the Massiel Matos with 16 points and the outside hitter Natalia Martínez who contributed 11 tallies as the top two scorers, while Vielka Peralta added nine. On the South American side, Leslie Leyva Garcia topped the scoring with seven points.

Brazilian, Alexandre Ceccato, Dominican Republic’s coach, commented that “we expected to suffer a little as Peru serves too hard, but it was the other way around.

 However my team did it better, particularly Natalia Martínez destroyed their game and it made easy our attack. We played pretty well.”

The Dominican captain, Yokaty Pérez, a bulky setter, expressed that “we played confidently by doing what we have practiced. Actually we have a powerful team as on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays we work out in the gym; but generally we train vigorously throughout the week.”

Spaniard coach, Juan Diego Garcia, coach of Peru, explained that “we met a really powerful opposing team in service and they lopsided the game. They had good block and defence and it gave them several options in the counterattack which we did not know how to act in response. Moreover they are very tall, and have an excellent fitness and much power in the net.”

The South American captain, Nicole Abreu, illustrated in her words the reasons of such loss when declaring “we did not enter much focused on the match and the Dominicans gave their utmost to defeat us. We did not know how to solve it.”