Castillo, Hooker and Lloyd advance to semis of Globe Award

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, January 28, 2013 – Dominican libero Brenda Castillo and  opposite Destinee Hooker and setter Carli Lloyd of United States advanced to the semifinal phase of the Globe Award contest being conducted by Volleyball.it, a popular website dedicated to volleyball based in Modena, Italy.

Castillo, the best libero and best digger of the London Olympic Games, received 58 percent of the votes of the fans against 42 of Japanese Yuko Sano. In the next round, Castillo will go against Brazilian Fabi De Oliveira, who edged Italian Giulia Leonardi 50.3 to 49.6.

Hooker overwhelmed Turkey’s Neslihan Demir Darnel 71-29 and will be paired in the semifinals against Natalia Goncharova of Russia a 55-45 winner over Italian Nadia Centoni.

On the other hand, Lloyd outdistanced Brazilian Dani Lins 61-38 and will be paired Yoshie Takeshita of Japan who won 57-43 over Poland’s Katarzyna Skorupa.

The next round of voting will take place from 8:00 of February 4 to 23:59 of February 8 (Europe Central Time).

Volleyball Globe on the net is a volleyball prize yearly awarded to players who stood out more in the last calendar year, playing in a club of any national championship in the world, and with their national team.

The vote will take place in two phases.

The first will consist of a popular vote of the international Volleyball.it readers through polls published in a dedicated section of the website, with male and female players divided by role; later on, a subsequent vote of an enlarged jury, made by more than 100 volleyball journalists gathered worldwide, will have the leading value to the award of two absolute prizes.

The jury of journalists will be given a list of all male and female players included in the survey previously mentioned, asking them to indicate five absolute names in a ranking from 1st to 5th place, both for men and women.

The prize will be awarded to the best male player and the best female player in the world, and there will be partial awards for each male and female role (setter, opposite, spiker, middle blocker and libero).