Determined Korea narrowly beat Canada in an epic tie-break – the highest scoring fifth set so far at the 2021 FIVB Women’s Volleyball Nations League in Rimini, Italy to register their third win at the top-tier competition.
Korea on Monday got off to a sluggish start to go down 15-25 to the well-organised Canadians, but bounced back to beat the rivals 25-18 in the second set. The third set turned a see-saw battle, with Canada in superb form to overcome the Koreans’ strong challenge for the hotly-contested 29-27 triumph.
Korea maintained their poise and came back with fine attacks and solid blocks to capture the remaining two sets 25-20 and 21-19 to dash out Canada’s high hopes of winning this match.
Park Jeongah was the star of Korea as she scored a game-high 24 points for the team, added with impressive 23 points by captain Kim Yeon Koung. Powerful Kiera Van Ryk also topscored with 24 points on Canada’s losing efforts.
With the incredible tie-break win, Korea improved their win-loss record to 3-9 to overtake hosts Italy to the 14th position with 9 points at the standing. Canada remained at the 13th place.
Jennifer Cross of Canada said at the virtual Mixed Zone: “It was a really exciting match. I think both teams had really great moments and also some moments which were not so great as you could see we went down. Losing this match was a little bit frustrating for the outcome. I think that we can learn a lot from this team in terms of being aggressive so we can start earning points.
“There are some key moments when we had a match point and they went back, so we have to be more aggressive in these key moments, but we are still a very young team so I think we will learn that, but we were not aggressive enough in these key moments.”
Korea’s Park Jeongah said: “It was a really tough game and I’m really happy that we won. Since we were serving really strong to make them struggle in passing, they were not able to play fast as they mainly had to play high balls, so it was important for us. Next week we will try to win as many games as possible.”
Related links of AVC
AVC Website: click www.asianvolleyball.net
AVC Facebook: click www.Facebook.com/AsianVolleyballConfederation
AVC Twitter: click: https://twitter.com/avcvolley
AVC Instagram: click: https://www.instagram.com/avcvolley/?hl=en
AVC Youtube: click: Asian Volleyball Confederation
AVC WeChat: Asian Volleyball Confederation