Nicaragua suffers loss in the opening match of Central American Championship – Volleyball News
U 23 men’s volleyball teams from Nicaragua and Guatemala crossed their ways in the opening match of First Central American Championship on Tuesday.
City of Tegucigalpa in Honduras provided the backdrop for the Pool B match, which ended with the following result: 3-0 (25-12, 25-17, 25-10). Guatemala proved to be better and settled for victory, while Nicaragua suffered the loss in the opening match.
Jeyson Flores played an instrumental role in Guatemala’s victory. He staged a consistent performance and totalled match-high 14 points. He was followed by Luis Garcia who supported the team with nine points.
Nicaragua, on the other hand, displayed a poor performance as none of the players could cross the single-digit score. Team captain Lester Martinez was the highest scorer with 5 points.
The Guatemalan Coach Pelaez Alvinzi gave a perfect plan to his team, which was successfully executed. The starting line-up of Guatemala worked out a great performance and helped the team with early points. Nicaragua suffered too many set-backs and kept in chase. Guatemalan hitters added quick points and stretched out the gap of points. Meanwhile, the solid defence of Guatemala restricted Nicaragua to a low score. Opening set inched its way to the end, while Guatemala controlled the operations. Nicaragua could not come out of the blues and dropped first set.
Nicaragua struggled to give some competition to opponents in the following set. Comparatively saying, the performance of Nicaragua was slightly better. However, the strong Guatemalan side did not allow Nicaragua to come up. They also secured the second set and extended their lead to 2-0.
Third set was again totally dominated by Guatemala. Nicaragua ended with 10 points and gave out the match points.
The mentor of winning squad, Pelaez Alvinzi from Guatemala praised the great effort of his team. He was full of emotions and disclosed his thoughts in the following manner: “do not you think we are the favorites of the tournament, there are good teams and they all have the same opportunity, the experience of some of my players helps us deal with each game with more serenity.”
His counterpart from Nicaragua, Lester Martinez, explained the reason of failure. He said his team gave out a weak performance due to lack of experience. However, he expressed hope for improvement in the next match.
The captain of Nicaraguan team Benjamin Carr stated: “We miss the bill, claw and encouragement we had, Guatemala is a strong team, we will make progress in what remains of the tournament.”
Tags: