Schwerin, Germany, March 25, 2015.  It was late Wednesday evening, when over 2,000 spectators finally celebrated the victory of their SCHWERINER SC over the Turkish adversary BURSA BBSK. After 106 minutes the match ended at 3:1 (25-19, 16-25, 26-24, 25-19) to give the German side an advantage of 3 points before the return leg of this semifinal clash from the 2015 CEV Volleyball Challenge Cup - Women.

SCHWERINER SC started from a brilliant side-out with a pipe attack by their top scorer Lonneke Sloetjes and it was ups and downs during the first set - a head-to-head race until the 19-19 remise. Afterwards SCHWERINER SC remained more focused and won the first set by 25-19 due to their better attack efficiency and the weak defence of the visitors.  Taking this energy to set number two, there was a clash of concentration in the German team after BURSA’s Priscilla Rivera Brens hurt her neck and had to be replaced.  Shocked by this injury, BURSA fought harder and played with very fast attacks through the middle blockers and the outside spikers, taking advantage of good setting and great defence.  SCHWERINER SC could gather only 2 points after the second technical time-out and had to leave this set with a 16-25 loss.

The third set started like the second ended: SCHWERINER SC was not able to follow the speed of their opponents and suddenly fell 7-13 behind, but empowered by their fans, the German team started catching up using the strong attacks of their team captain Lousi Souza Ziegler and top scorer Lonneke Sloetjes.  From 15-15 it was a fight on equal terms with the happier end for SCHWERINER SC, which could totally rely on Ziegler on the way to the eventual 26-24.  With the victory in mind, the hosts dominated the start of the fourth set, but BURSA fought back, so the German squad needed the very strong serving of Jennifer Geerties to create a little buffer.  With the score of 25-19, SCHWERINER SC won the set and thus their home match of this semifinal.

The best scorer of this match was the Turkish opposite Meryem Boz with 25 points, followed by the opposite of the German team Lonneke Sloetjes with 23 points.  

Emin Imen, coach of BURSA BBSK:  “It was a strong match, we had a good start, but with the injury of Priscilla we lost our focus a little bit and our serves were not constantly good enough to win today.”

Felix Koslowski, coach of SCHWERINER SC:  “Thanks to all our fans who created a fantastic atmosphere!  After the injury of Rivera Brens we lost our concentration, but we came back.  With this victory we have a very good starting point for the re-match, which will be a very hard game for us, but we will make it a hard match for BURSA as well.”

Zeynep Seda Eryuz, captain of BURSA BBSK:  “We fought hard and gave our best today.  We still hope to win this semifinal because we believe in ourselves, we are a strong team and we will have our up to 5,000 fans to support us in reaching and winning the golden set.”

Lousi Souza Ziegler, captain of SCHWERINER SC:  “We are happy that we won today, even if it was not our best match.  Now we just have to win 2 more sets in BURSA and we will play as well as we can to reach the final.”

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