Dominican Republic gets the bronze medal

LIMA, Peru, October 19, 2014 – Dominican Republic claimed the bronze medal in the U20 Final Four Women’s Volleyball Gatorade Cup with a straight-set (25-15, 25-20, 25-16) victory over Cuba on Sunday.

The second victory of the Dominicans over Cuba in the tournament took 1 hour and two minutes of action. The winners held the advantage in attacks (40-26) and blocks (8-5) with the losers with the edge in the service winners (7-5).

Massiel Matos (19), Vielka Peralta (12) and Natalia Martinez (10) once again led the offense of Dominican Republic that finished the event with two victories over Cuba and losses to Peru and Argentina.

Brazilian Alexandre Ceccato, coach of Dominican Republic said “Cuba failed too much and it helped us in the match. We did well because we executed what we practiced in the training and got the result we expected, The girls were focused, played with desire and got the victory.”

“Today we had a good game and played with confidence. We had concentration and won the match but we know that we have to keep working to improve and reinforce our qualities,” Dominican captain Yocaty Perez said.

Tomas Fernandez, coach of Cuba, was disappointed with the result and the attitude of the team on court. “I am really disappointed. It is not possible that athletes who train about 30 hours during the week are thinking in other things than representing well their country. Today we lacked everything, a lot of failures and on court they didn’t sweat the shirt. Now we need to train hard and educate the girls with great effort to improve our game.”

Carmela Massip, the captain of Cuba said: “We didn’t do what we have been training. We completely lost the focus and the Dominicans played their game and kept the level. We lacked determination to move the game forward.”