Nicaragua earns fifth place in U-19 Continental Championship – Volleyball news
A 5/6 classification match of the NORCECA Boys’ U-19 Continental Championship took place on Saturday, July 7, 2012 between Nicaragua as well as Costa Rica in the Mexican city of Tijuana where the tournament was held. The classification match between the two sides took place at the Centro de Alto Rendimiento sports hall where 100 spectators watched the five set long match that ended in a win for Nicaragua.
The Nicaragua squad was able to secure the fifth place in the championship in two hours and nine minutes at the following final set scores: 18-25, 21-25, 25-23, 25-23 and 15-12.
The coach of the Nicaragua side, Osman Hernández, shared his views at the outcome of the match by making the following comments, “The last three matches have been like this, very close, very demanding, but that really helps us to advance and improve. We had one goal: to win a fifth place and we achieved it.”
On the other hand, the Costa Rican coach Alberto Travieso had the following statements to give at the end of the match: “I just want to congratulate coach Hernández and Nicaragua. The players did a great job.”
The player with the highest number of points in the entire match was Cesar Gomez of Costa Rica as he tallied a score of 23. Gomez was helped by Victor Alpizar and Jafet García both of whom put up a score of 17 for their side. On the other hand, the most active player of the Nicaragua side was Ruben Alejandro Mora with 20 points. Ivan Mejia of Nicaragua also made his presence felt by adding 19 points of his own.
The first set of the match gave the lead away to Costa Rica at the start but Nicaragua did not stay back for long and was able to equalise the score. Costa Rica managed to take the lead again and this time they held strong to it while the Nicaragua squad kept trailing behind. Costa Rica remained successful in bagging the first set of the match at 25-18.
The confidence generated by securing the first set enabled the Costa Ricans to take an early lead in the second set but the Nicaragua team put up a better show and the frame reached quite a few ties and saw a couple of lead changes before Costa Rica pulled up ahead in the end to bag the frame at 25-21.
The Nicaragua squad put up a good show and avoided a clean sweep by getting hold of the third set at 25-23. Nicaragua was able to repeat the feat in the fourth set as they made the match reach the fifth set by securing the fourth frame at 25-23 as well. The fifth set of the match went towards the Nicaragua side at 15-12 after a bit of struggle.
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