Volleyball – TOP volleyball nations from across the continent are hopeful of making their mark in the girls’ and boys’ volleyball competitions at the third Asian Youth Games in Bahrain.
Both tournaments are scheduled to get underway today at Isa Sports City in Riffa, with 12 girls’ teams in the fray and 11 amongst the boys, following the last-minute withdrawal of Kazakhstan.
Matches are to be held at Isa Sports City’s B and C halls, respectively, and all are welcome to attend. Entrance is free of charge.
In the girls’ volleyball event, the field has been divided into four pools for the preliminary round. Hosts Bahrain are in Group A along with Iran and Qatar. Group B features China, Hong Kong, and Jordan; Group C includes Chinese Taipei, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia; and Group D is composed of Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines.
Indonesia’s Brazilian-Japanese head coach Marcos Sugiyama expects a tough challenge ahead in the kingdom, and is hopeful that his team – which he describes as the “new generation” for Indonesian women’s volleyball – can “maintain focus all the time” while taking their medal bid “day by day”.
“Our expectations in the Asian Youth Games are very high,” Sugiyama told the GDN yesterday following his team’s practice. “We will try to play with discipline and, as a new generation for Indonesia, we need to give more concentration in certain aspects – our players are very young, and they need to maintain focus all the time.
“In general, we have a good team for the Asian Youth Games. Our group is difficult, and we will take things day by day to win our games.”
“We’ve had challenging results recently but we are thinking for the future. We have some players here who are in the senior team already, so we are trying to prepare these young talents.”
In today’s girls’ fixtures, the Indonesians take on Kazakhstan at 2pm. Prior to that, Hong Kong face Jordan at 11.30am, and later in the afternoon South Korea battle the Philippines at 4.30pm. Iran then play Qatar at 7pm in the day’s concluding contest.
“We look forward to our game against Kazakhstan tomorrow,” Sugiyama added. “We had a good practice today, our players showed good energy and motivation, so tomorrow we will bring a lot of things. If we have good concentration, we can pass our opponents.”
In the boys’ tournament, Iran’s national team are amongst the favourites to contend for a gold medal. They recently missed out on the podium with a fourth-place classification from 24 nations in the FIVB Volleyball Boys’ U19 World Championship, held last July and August in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Head coach Adel Gholami stresses that they have recovered from that event and are fully ready to go for gold in Bahrain.
“We have prepared well for this tournament after the world championship – we’ve been practising twice a day, and now we are ready.
“We are feeling good at this moment. We fought for the gold medal in the world championship but we lost one important player in the beginning, which gave us some difficulties. But we fought for each other and almost got a medal.
“For one week after that everyone was sad about our result, but we then started to practise and our players learned that this is life. They continued to train hard and now we have come here to take the gold medal.
“Everyone is in a good place and we are confident for this Asian Youth Games.”
Iran are in a tough Group B for the boys’ preliminaries alongside China and Qatar. Hosts Bahrain are in Group A with Pakistan and Mongolia; while Group C is composed only of Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia after Kazakhstan’s non-participation. Group D features Chinese Taipei, Thailand, and Indonesia.
The schedule for today’s boys’ volleyball matches were reset last night, with play now scheduled to begin at 2pm.
Bahrain are only in action tomorrow for both the boys’ and girls’ teams. The girls face Iran while the boys take on Pakistan, both at 7pm.
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