Costa Rican pairs take a good start at the 12th Central American BVB – Volleyball News
The 12th Central American Beach Volleyball Championship took centre stage on Friday in El Salvador.
In the men’s section of the double-gender competition, a total of nine duos from six countries joined the action. The tournament began with the pool-play and tandems from Costa Rica performed brilliantly well. Costa Rica sent two men’s teams in the competition
that remained undefeated on the opening day.
The duo of Gilberto Villegas and Alexander Villegas was labelled as CRC-1, while Esteban Escobar and Jose Suarez represented CRC-2. The two Costa Rican pairs were placed in Pool C and Pool D, respectively.
Escobar- Suarez of CRC-2 played their first pool-play against Guatemala’s Andy Leonardo-Erick Garrido. The match was an intense fight between two pairs. Escobar and Suarez complimented each other and managed to dismiss the Guatemalan counters in the opening
frame of the match. They sent 21-18 on board to earn 1-0 lead in the match. The second set progressed in the similar fashion. GUA pair hit from all angles and tried to create the tie of game score. Nonetheless, the Costa Ricans did not allow the opponents
to come up and closed second set at 21-19. Escobar- Suarez emerged successful and bagged first victory of the competition.
Next up, the CRC-2 team clashed with Domingo Avila/Otto Penso of Panama. It was even tougher challenge for the defending champions from Costa Rica. The opponents started out on a good note and successfully claimed the opening set of the match, 21-15.
Escobar- Suarez hit back angrily in the following set and devastated the rival duo with an early onslaught of volleys. Avila-Penso lost momentum and gave out easy points to the CRC. Second set ended in Costa Rica’s favour at 21-14 and the game score tied
at 1-1. In the decisive third set, Escobar- Suarez displayed good action on the net and overpowered the opponents with 15-13 win. Hence, the CRC-2 team added another win to its tally.
In the third fixture of the day, Jeovanny Medrano/Rafael Vargas from El Salvador challenged Escobar- Suarez. They failed to perform up to the mark and received 0-2 (14-21, 17-21) defeat in the match. It was the last match for Escobar- Suarez on day-1 of
the 12th Central American Beach Volleyball Championship. They finished the opening day with a perfect record of 3-0.
“we finished in third place with Jose in Costa Rica’s local championship and I feel confident with the job we did today; we respect all our opponents and I’m glad to be here," said Escobar at the end of the day.
Elsewhere, Gilberto and Alexander Villegas of CRC-1 defeated the home duo of Carlos Leiva/David Vargas in a three-set affair. The final set scores were 2-1 (21-19, 15-21, 15-13). Therefore, Costa Rica close the day-1 with an overall record of 4-0.
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