USA got their second win at U21 Pan American Cup

HAVANA, Cuba, October 5, 2022.- United States had another good performance at the Men’s U21 Pan American Cup and defeated Dominican Republic 3-0 (25-21, 25-15, 25-21) at Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum.

The North Americans lead pool A undefeated (2-0), but the winner will be decided until Thursday morning when they face Chile, because both teams couldn’t arrive on time due to flight delays. The South Americans have 1-1 record.

Facing the Dominicans, who lost their three matches, the Americans held huge advantages in attacks (42-23) and blocks (9-3), while servers were in favor of the opponents (3-2) as well as unforced errors (21-29).

Three players from the winning team scored double figures, led by middle blockers Omene Nyerovwome (12) and Marc Smith (11), followed by outside hitter Zachary Rama (10). From the Caribbeans the top scorer was outside hitter Roony Molina with 8 points.

Andy Read, head coach of United States said “the most important thing is going one step at a time, today was our second match, it went well for us, and we won. We had good passing for a fluid performance on the court and being able to score. Tomorrow we will face Chile, a good team that came well prepared, they will come out with everything, we are going to recover to play a good match”.   

Middle blocker Omene Nyerovwome considered “our mentality was important, yesterday we played five sets against Mexico, in which we had to make a great effort and today we prepared for things to come out better. This Thursday with Chile will be the same, we must be aggressive for everything to be perfect and win”.

Dominican coach, José Dante Manón recognized that “for us it was a good match, because we faced a taller team and with better level, but ours has been adjusting from less to more, we are adjusting connecting more, only one set was difficult for us, but we recovered and reached 21 points like in the first”.

Their captain Luther Rosario’s gave his opinion “it was a good match because it helps us improve. We need more for a better performance, but we have the material to win these matches. It was difficult against the United States because they are well prepared. Their serves are strong, and their blocking is high and well formed, that made it very hard, in some moments it went well but we couldn’t keep our passing high to work from the sides”.