Apeldoorn, Netherlands, July 8, 2017 – Dominican Republic edged Japan in late Saturday’s match 3-1 (25-20, 25-19, 24-26, 29-27) winning comfortably first two sets and then the thrilling fourth one with Japan coming back strongly only in set three.
Bethania De La Cruz had a match-high 21 points followed by Annerys Victoria Vargas Valdez who registered 16 points. Yurie Nabeya scored team-high 16 points on the losing side while Yuki Ishii
added another 15 points.
Dominican Republic coach Marcos Kwiek: The moment Brayelin Elizabeth Martinez was down injured on the court was hard for the team, especially for her sister Jineiry. But after the match continued, we stayed concentrated, as we did the entire match. If you want to beat a well-organized team like Japan, you must stay focused the whole time, and we did that today.
Dominican Republic captain Bethania: We are very happy with this victory, especially after the long break in the fourth set due to the injury of Brayelin Elizabeth Martinez. Japan is a very strong team, especially in defence, but we managed to break them today.
Japan coach Nakada Kumi, coach of Japan: I am happy with the way we kept fighting in the third set to stay in the game. But in the rest of the match we were not able to use the chances we were given. We need to work on utilizing the opportunities we get in the rallies.
Japan captain Nana Iwasaka: This loss is quite frustrating. We didn’t get in our rhythm in this match, because we made too many unforced errors. We couldn’t score as much as we should have.
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