Hangzhou, China, July 7, 2023 – Undefeated China and Japan set up the final showdown on Saturday evening following their convincing wins against Chinese Taipei and Thailand in the Friday’s semifinals of the 1st Asian Women’s U16 Volleyball Championship in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province and the host city for the upcoming Asian Games.
Japan became the first team to storm into the highly-anticipated final showdown and also secured a ticket to the 2024 FIVB Volleyball Girls’ U17 World Championship after seeing off Thailand in straight sets 25-22, 25-13, 25-18 in the semifinals at Hangzhou Normal University Cangqian Gymnasium.
Hikari Kudo scored a match-high 19 points from 16 attacks, one block and 2 aces for Japan, while captain Yuzuki Baba and Rion Chuganji kept good company to add 17 points and 16 points respectively.
“We are happy to win this match and the ticket to the World Championship. We were quite disappointed that one of our players suffered an injury on court. Fortunately, we quickly recovered later as we had good servings, which helped us control the game,” said Japan head coach Saegusa Daichi.
“Truly, today we played really bad. We could not follow the game plan we had initially set. We tried to score more points but it was so difficult. My girls are very young and less experienced so they could not handle well with high pressure,” said Thailand head coach Jarun Niemtubtim after the match.
In the other semifinal clash, hosts China, steered by promising Yang Shuming, powered past Chinese Taipei in comfortable straight sets 25-18, 25-17, 25-18 at Hangzhou Normal University Cangqian Gymnasium.
Captain Yang Shuming topped the leaderboard with 25 points for China, while middle blocker Chen Pinyu scored 21 points on the Chinese Taipei’s losing effort.
“I don’t think we have performed well to the full extent. Before this championship, we didn’t have any match with any other team, so my girls felt quite tense on court.” said China head coach Kuang Qi.
“During the match, it’s normal to lose some points. But I believe, as you can see, we were at the upper hand in terms of individual abilities. As long as we stabilize the basic actions, it wouldn’t be hard to win.”
“We trained for only one and a half month since this April, which was quite short. We’ll see if we can make it to Top 3. But I don’t think we’ve played our best so we will try to improve in our remaining matches,” said…
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