PARIS, France, August 1, 2024.- The Dominican Republic fell to Türkiye 1-3 (25-21, 18-25, 22-25, 15-25) on Thursday and will play a decisive match against the Netherlands to move forward at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Dominican Republic dropped 0-2 in Pool C and the Netherlands with the same record but with one point will meet on Saturday at 9:00 local time to have a shot to advance to the quarterfinals and one or the two best third-place teams.
Against Türkiye, leading all scorers was opposite Melissa Vargas of Türkiye, who tallied an impressive 31 points (26 kills, three aces, two blocks). Middle blocker Eda Erdem, with 14, and outside hitters Ilkin Aydin. and Hande Baladin, with ten each, also provided some scoring punch to the Turkish offense.
The Dominicans, who couldn’t keep up the same level from the first set throughout the match, got 14 points (all in kills) from outside hitter Brayelin Martinez and another nine from her sister, middle blocker Jineiry Martinez.
“We got to face two very strong opponents (Italy and Türkiye) in our first matches here,” setter and captain Niverka Marte said. “We have the confidence that we can fight against teams of their caliber, but in both matches, we made too many errors and that’s just not possible at this level. Today we fought hard and had good moments, which makes us happy. Now we need to move forward and focus on the Netherlands. It’s going to be another difficult match as they’ve been playing very well, but we’ll prepare for it and try to limit our errors.”
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