News

Ningbo, Southeast China, May 24, 2005 - Hosts China and Cuba both eased past their opponents in preliminary Group action on the opening day of the Shenzhou Cup China International Women's Volleyball Tournament here on Tuesday.

In what is effectively a 2005 World Grand Prix preview, Olympic bronze medallist Cuba beat the Dominican Republic in straight sets (26-24, 25-19, 25-18) in a preliminary Group B match - the second match of the afternoon - while in the last match, China beat the Netherlands by the same sets margin 25-20, 25-13, 25-22 in Group A. Meanwhile, in the opening match of the day, Bulgaria beat Poland 25-17, 25-22, 25-16.

The feature match though was the final one of the day and to the local fans’ surprise, the Dutch women fought bravely against the Olympic and World Cup champions in the first set and managed to stay within range at 21-20 before the more experienced Chinese went on a four point run to close the set.
Pic: Great contest at the net between the Dominican Republic (white) and Cuba
Making their debut at their new "home" of Ningbo for its first international match after the Olympic Games, the Chinese women looked more comfortable before 8, 000 chanting fans in the second set as they prevailed by 12 points. In the third set, China rotated their players frequently, but still met no real challenge from the Netherlands.

China recruited several young players after winning the gold medal at the Athens Olympic Games and middle blockers Ma Yunwen, Xue Ming, Wang Ting and setter Zhao Yun made their international debuts in the match.

"It's the first official game for the new edition of the Chinese women's team,” Chinese head coach Chen Zhonghe said. “Generally speaking, we played to our standard, but I think we still need to improve our serving and blocking."

Yang Hao converted 13 of her 26 spiking opportunities to lead China with 16 points and Zhou Suhong and Ma Yunwen added 10 and eight respectively.

"China were definitely stronger than us in this match," said Dutch head coach Avital Selinger. "We struggled with our serving and receiving and that's the main reason that we lost the match."

In the earlier match, Cuba and the Dominican Republic hotly contested the first set as both teams played efficient offence. The Dominican Republic maintained a narrow lead most of the way before Cuba levelled at 18-all before taking the lead at 23-21. The Dominican Republic managed to deny one set point to tie at 24-all, but Fernandez Barros had a kill and an ace to award the Cubans the first set.

Taking advantage of a powerful service, Cuba had no difficulties in the next two sets and ended up winning the match in 66 minutes.

"We played a good match today,” Cuba head coach Luis Calderon said. “We were well organized and the players did very well technically, Hopefully we can play better and better and reach the final." Calderon eyed a potential title clash with China.

Seven teams are competing in two groups of the preliminaries with the top two teams from each group qualifying for the semi-finals.