Honduras beat St. Lucia for first victory

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, June 27, 2014- Honduras trounced St. Lucia 3-0 (25-13, 25-13, 25-22) for their first victory at the Girls’ U-18 NORCECA Continental Championship on Friday.

Honduras took advantage of St. Lucia’s unforced errors in the first two sets, but then had difficulties with their passing in the third set before recovering rapidly. Honduras will play Trinidad and Tobago for the seventh position while St. Lucia finishes the tournament winless and in ninth place.

Honduras’ serves made the difference overwhelming St. Lucia with a huge margin of 15-4 and they also held advantage in spikes by 30-12.  Both teams committed a similar number of errors Honduras with 29 and St Lucia with 28.

The best scorers for Honduras were middle blocker Mercedes Caballero with 9 points, opposite Lilian Alcerro chipped in with 8 points and outside hitter Mirian Lobo added 7 points. Setter Skye Mondesir and middle blocker Nikita Greenidge scored 5 points each as St. Lucia’s top scorers.

Mirian Lobos, Honduras’ captain said her team feels happy and added “even if we had our ups and downs it didn’t affect the final result; I believe we can win tomorrow as we are highly motivated”.

Skye Mondesir, St. Lucia’s captain expressed that her team needs to focus more “we lost concentration which contributed in our down fall and I believe we could have won today as Honduras played similar to us.”

“It is always satisfying to win and I’m pleased with the outcome” said Coach Catarina Lizeth. “I had to motivate the girls harder as St. Lucia was pushing harder in the third set, telling them we would leave tonight if we would’ve lost. Hopefully tomorrow we can perform better and defeat Trinidad and Tobago”.

Coach Keam Charlery of St. Lucia said “it was a tough tournament for us and the girls focused more in the third set as you can see the score. In conclusion this is a good experience, the girls improved in terms of understanding what they have to do and their position in the court”.