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LA PAZ, Baja California Sur, June 6, 2022.-
The sixth edition of the U21 Women’s Pan
American Cup that kicks off on Tuesday in La Paz
will grant two tickets for the 2023 age-group
FIVB World Championship.
With ten competing teams, the two vacancies
available at the qualifying tournament for the
FIVB World Championship will automatically
qualify two teams from the NORCECA Confederation
and not of the South American Volleyball
Confederations as only Argentina and Chile are
taking part of the competition.
Marcelo Silva, Head Coach Argentina:
“We’ve been preparing since April, our main goal
here is to prepare for the South American
qualifier to the World Championship in August.
We are glad to be here, it’s a great opportunity
to measure ourselves against interesting
opponents; and I’ll evaluate my team”.
Carolyn O’Dwyer, Head Coach Canada:
“We had a larger group training in Canada for
ten days leading up, so we had a little bit of a
longer period than we had in the past which was
nice. I think with the change of the age-group
we were able to bring some older athletes,
giving us some more experience and our
expectations are definitely high of what we can
do this week, we hope to make Canada proud”.
Eduardo Guillaume, Head Coach Chile:
“Getting back to compete is positive, in three
years with this team we’ve only played five
matches; we are really excited of being here, to
have played several friendly matches against
Mexico and on the eve of the competition. I’ve
been working with this group of players for a
long time, we have high expectations from them.
They were born in 2004-2005. It will be a tough
tournament because of the level of play, we want
to qualify among the final four”.
Henry Rodríguez, Head Coach Costa Rica:
“It’ll be interesting facing highly competitive
teams. Our team is a U18 renovated squad,
Central American champions, eight from that team
and some others are U16. Our expectations are to
improve, have good results and reach our U21
Central American Championship in July in good
conditions to win the title”.
Rogelio Andrés Goytizolo, Head Coach Cuba:
“As all the teams here, we are aiming for a good
competition; our goal is to play the title
match. We don’t know anything about our rivals,
but our team has young athletes who desire a
good outcome”.
Cristian Cruz, Head Coach Dominican Republic:
“We had a good base camp, almost eight months
working with this new group. This team
participated at the U18 World Championship by
ranking due to the Pandemic. We share a group
with Puerto Rico and Cuba; we know that four
players from Puerto Rico competed in Worlds and
about Cuba we have no information. We are
confident to be playing for medals”.
Marvin Ulloa, Head Coach Honduras:
“We just had access to our gymnasium in March.
Half of the team was U19 and U20 Central
American Champions and competed in last year’s
senior Central American Championship. We are
suffering the absence of two key players:
Nathaly Pérez who is studying in the United
States and our team captain Gabriela Gomez who
has health issues. We made some internal
adjustments, and we hope they understand each
other well”.
Luis Alberto León, Head Coach Mexico:
“The team is glad, motivated and anxious to
begin to compete here in Mexico. This is a
strong competition, eight teams from NORCECA
fighting for two berths for the World
Championship and our objective is one of those
tickets”.
José Rivera, Head Coach Puerto Rico:
“We renovated our squad for this event, this is
the first international experience for 80% of
the group and they have a better height,
something we identified in the past world
championship. The team is healthy and with good
energy, excited to compete”.
Daniel Fisher, Head Coach United States:
“We had a wonderful preparation, we were able to
be with our senior team in Louisiana for the VNL,
it was a nice opportunity to train in the
morning and watch the matches at night and learn
from them. We started seven days of training
with 20 players and now we’re here with 12, we
feel we have a strong team and excited to be
here, we hope for the best”. |
