HAVANA, Cuba, October 3, 2022.- Mexico beat Dominican Republic 3-1 (20-25, 25-23,26-24, 25-20) in the opening of the Men´s U21 Pan American Cup at the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum.
Dominicans started off with a lot, but their opponents knew how to establish their strategy and were superior in attacks (63-55), in blocks (10-8) and in serves (4-2), while committing more unforced errors (27-19) in a pool A match.
The leading scorers were Dominicans Luther Rosario, team captain, and Ronny Molina, both with 19 points, while from the winning team the players that scored the most were opposite hitter Ángel Domínguez (17) and Ramón González (14), followed by middle blocker Diego Esquivel and Leonardo Maldonado, 12 tallies each.
Head Coach Jorge Alberto Romero (Mexico) said “to lift the team we had to insist them the need to perform orderly and with discipline to help solve things, and that to play technically helps more than physical work. It’s very important for them to understand it, to solve the actions”.
“Our weapon was a directing and floating in serves, Dominicans have a good floating serve, but they don’t have reception and we took advantage of that, attacking to a player that luckily they never changed, and we worked on him the entire time and complicated their passing by the middle, which was harming us the most”.
Their team captain Jorge Robles gave his opinion “we were always united, we have our game play, and we can do well and more, because with this teamwork we can beat any team”.
Jorge Dante, head coach of Dominican Republic, recognized that “our reception and blocking fail completely, but the team is well, they are young, and I have two athletes that are adjusting, and I am observing who will stay, because our starting player couldn’t because he’s in college. We will continue to work on our deficiencies, I hope they improve in these two skills, because our attacking was good”.
Ronny Molina, Dominican outside hitter said “we started well, with attitude and confidence, but then came our errors, we thought the other team was weak, and we completely lost focus. I always trusted my team, nevertheless I believe we stopped communicating”.
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