Canadians Conquer Costa Rica

 

Canada, September 17, 2007,It has been some time since the Canadian women’s team has hosted an event of this caliber and they are prepared to put it all on the line in front of their hometown crowd. While the Canadian’s are on an upswing with the rebuilding of their program, they will need to take this Costa Rican team seriously as they too are making waves in the NORCECA volleyball community.

 

The Canadians took advantage of the hometown momentum right out of the gates opening a 2-point lead and then up by 4 points 16-12 by the second technical time out. The Canadians where strong at the net making it difficult for Costa Rica to get any real momentum going, and would ultimately only relinquish 6 more points to Costa Rica as they went on to take set one 25-18.

 

Set 2 saw a feistier Costa Rican team as they took as 4-2 lead early on, but it did not take Canada long to respond to the challenge as they battled back to tie the set a 5-5 and up by one 8-7 at the first technical time out. Canada would widen the gap to 16-13 thanks to the cheers of the Canadian crowd. So while the cheers got stronger, so did the play of the Canadian team and the dominated the remainder of the set to win 25-16.

 

Set three started much like the first two. Neither team was prepared to quit exchanging kills with Canada holding a slight 8-6 lead at the technical time out. Canada would increase the margin going up 16-12. This was Canada’s night to shine, and no one was going to take that away. In the end, the Canadians wrapped up the set 25-18.

 

Tiffany Dodds was Canada’s best player with 11 points on 8 kills and 3 blocks while Karen Cope added 16 points for Costa Rica on 14 kills and 2 blocks.

 

Post Match Quotes:

Team Canada

Emily Cordonier- Captain

“ I think it was a good start for our team. I think we started a little bit slow by found our rhythm. Costa Rico played a good match. They are team that has been steadily improving over the past few years, so we did not take them lightly and knew that they were going to come out and do some good things and they did. We are happy with our start and look forward to playing teams like Puerto Rico and Cuba and hope that we can bring our best game.”

 

Naoki Miyashita- Head Coach

“It was a good start. We had a good performance and are satisfied with the result of today’s game, but there needs to be more. I know are team can perform better but we managed to win. Tomorrow we play Puerto Rico, so I know we will play better.”

 

Team Costa Rica

Paola Ramirez- Captain

“I think we played well but due to a lack of experience we made some juvenile errors. We look forward to improving our game as the tournament goes on.”

 

Eladio Vargas- Head Coach

“I am happy because before we came to this event we confronted many problems with the preparation of the team. In the past competition we had some problems with players who didn’t have a good attitude. Besides those problems I am satisfied because today the players overcame that situation, their attitude was good, they played very happy. Never the less, we have three players that in all of the tournaments before this one did not have the opportunity to play and they made many errors. We hope as the tournament goes on these players will play better. For us it is an honour and we are very happy to be at this tournament.”