Seoul, Korea, August 19, 2019 – Korea, backed by more than 2,400 cheering home fans, cruised to a 3-0 (25-10 25-14 25-22) victory over Hong Kong China to make it two in a row and capture the top spot in Pool A in the 20th Asian Senior Women’s Volleyball Championship at the Jamsil Indoor Stadium on Monday.
Korea, fresh from beating Iran 3-0 the previous day, got off to a brilliant start in the first set. As the player on the bench Lee Soyoung made a big impact with her exceptional attacks, Kim Hee Jin produced powerful serves to help the host side take an initial lead with a 11-point clear at 14-3, leaving boisterous home fans to give a big round of applause and creating an enthusiastic atmosphere inside the competition venue. Korea widened the gap to 15-4 and the visitors shuffled their line-up to revive their fortunes. Still, their efforts were in vain. Leading commandingly 20-7, Korea never looked back from then onwards. Lee Jae-Young’s blocks, Uhm Hye-Sun’s great serves and Lee Soyoung’s powerful attacks helped the home team clinch the one-sided set 25-10.
Korea replaced their key players with substitutions in the second set, but Hong Kong China set an early pace to lead narrowly 6-4. Lee Soyoung gave Korea a strong comeback as she tore the Hong Kong China’s defence apart with her attacks to stop the rivals’ good run of consecutive points. Korea caught up with Hong Kong China 7-7 and went on their good show to widen the margin to 20-10 and wrap up the set 25-14.
In the third set, Korea made use of their height advantage to block solidly, foiling the visitors’ determined attacking efforts. Hong Kong China poured everything to score some more points and as they were trailing closely 16-18, Korea still had enough to hold them off. The Koreans captured the thrilling set 25-22 and match.
Italian Stefano Lavarini, head coach of Korea, said after the match, “I would like to sincerely thank all the Korean fans for supporting us since the very first day. Their support helped me feel more comfortably while doing my job as head coach here.
Even though we are a bit stronger than Hong Kong China, we wanted to show respect to them by focusing on our plays and strategies while experimenting different things as well. The most important thing is basically, we focus on ours first so that we don’t fall apart when playing against the team like Hong Kong China. Korea’s main strength is defense and so now we are focusing more on our attacking skills to make the team much more aggressive and competitive than we are now.”
Korea team captain Kim Yeonkoung said, “I wanted to tell all our fans that we are fully prepared and in good shape. I trained a lot everyday and so I think I am in great condition. But I still feel ashamed of myself that I could not show all my abilities in today’s game against Hong Kong China.”
With three teams contesting Pool A, Korea are quite certain of topping the pool after claiming two consecutive wins to secure a berth for the round of top 8. Hong Kong China will next play Iran on Tuesday to decide the second team from Pool A to progress to top 8.
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