Arnhem, Netherlands, April 9, 2017. The Netherlands snatched the last ticket for the European Youth Olympic Festival coming up in July in Hungary following their 3-1 (25-12, 25-12, 23-25, 25-23) win over Poland in today’s match for the seventh place. The second classification match featured the national teams of Germany and Slovenia, where the Slovenian girls rallied to a 3-0 (25-19, 25-15, 25-20) victory to finish their campaign at the 2017 CEV U18 Volleyball European Championship - Women in fifth place.
You can follow the Championship also on Facebook and Twitter, with the official hashtag to be used for all of your posts and tweets being #EuroVolleyU18W!
Classification Match 7-8 | The Netherlands vs. Poland
The Netherlands earned the last ticket to the European Youth Olympic Festival with a dominant display, especially in the first two sets, where Poland didn’t have an answer to stop the Dutch spiking duo comprising of Hester Jasper and Lisa Nobel. In addition to that, a great working block-defence system troubled Poland’s offence and accounted for a 2-0 set lead after only 40 minutes of play. Although the Dutch demonstration of strength ended after the second set and Poland took even one set, too many Polish errors and 11 Dutch block kills decided the match in favour of the hosts. It was the third defeat in a row for Poland in the tournament and this cost them the chance to play at least one more international Volleyball highlight in 2017 after they already failed to get the right to play at the World Championship. On the other hand, the Dutch squad recovered astonishingly fast from Saturday’s shocking defeat to Slovenia and celebrated a happy end of their #EuroVolleuU18W campaign. Polish opposite Julia Szczurowska top scored with 23 points while home player and opposite Lisa Nobel booked 19 points for her team.
Classification Match 5-6 | Slovenia vs. Germany
Slovenia finished the 2017 CEV U18 Volleyball European Championship – Women with the best result ever in Slovenia’s history. Best player of the match was Slovenia’s outside spiker Alja Jerala wieth 13 points. Led by her, Slovenia had the better start in every set, while Germany had no service pressure to be a dangerous opponent. German coach Jens Tietböhl made some changes giving every player from the bench a chance to play. That is probably the reason why the German girls never found the right way into the match and lost it in straight sets.
Joze Casar, head coach of Slovenia spoke about the biggest success in Slovenian history, at least as far as this age group is concerned: “It was an amazing tournament for us. We didn’t start well but we could improve our performance from day to day. It is such a big success that we finished the tournament in fifth place and gained the ticket to the World Championship. I hope that we can make it even better there.’’
German coach Jens Tietböhl said: “Slovenia were the better team today. We made some changes to give every player the chance to play at the European Championship. I am satisfied with the result here, we survived a really strong pool and booked the ticket to the World Championship.’’
