China claims U-23 women's world volleyball title

Tijuana (Mexico), Oct 13 (IANS): China beat Dominican Republic 3-0 in the inaugural FIVB Women’s U-23 World Championship, wining the gold medal at the Baja California High Performance Center here.

The set scores were 25-21, 25-20, 26-24 in favour of China, reports Xinhua.

The Chinese won the first two sets easily Saturday. However, Dominican Republic did not give up and battled back to earn a 24-24 draw in the third set. China’s Liu Yanhan attacked and Gu Xinwei blocked Dominican Republic’s attack to win the last two points to close the set at 26-24.

Liu Yanhan and Zhang Xiaoya each scored 17 points and topped the scoring charts of China with 17 points while Brayelin Martinez and Jeoselyna Rodriguez finished with 14 and 13 points respectively for the Dominican side.

China won the intense battle for the gold relying on their blocking skills and overall ability, said China’s captain Yao Di as statistics showed that China held an overwhelming advantage of 11-4 in the blocking category.

“We are very happy to win this World Championship. We prepared a lot for this. All the three sets were really intense. We tried to do everything well in terms of preparation for blocking and defence, without missing any detail,” she said.

Meahwhile, China’s coach Xu Jiande highlighted Dominican Republic’s performance in the final and considered the match more difficult than what the scores showed.

“Dominican Republic is a great and a very strong team. The match was of a very high level and it could go to either side. Tonight the luck is with us,” he said.

Earlier, Japan captured the bronze medal with a 3-1 (25-16, 20-25, 25-11, 25-19) victory over the United States.