Published on Aug 19, 2003
[VOLLEYBALL] Croatia hammered Thailand’s Girl under18 squad 31 (2628 2517 2514 2516) to finish fifth in the FIVB 8th Girls’ U18 World Championship in Poland on Sunday night.
The fifth place playoff began with the Thais taking an early lead and maintaining it throughout the entire opening set. The European champions put up a strong resistance and Thailand had to serve five times to take the first set at 2826.
The Thai team, who beat hosts Poland in the earlier round, struggled in the second set as the Croatians changed their gameplan. Senna Usic, one of the tournament's best scorers, was unstoppable in attack and collected 23 points in the match.
Usic’s teammates made some magnificent contribution as Croatia cruised along smoothly. Thailand never got the break through they were desperately looking for and lost the next two sets easily.
The defeat was a big setback for Thailand, who failed to repeat their 1997 success, when they ended up at fifth in the championship that was hosted by the Kingdom.
"My girls showed tremendous guts. We have to accept the fact that the Croatians were much stronger than us. Their blocks made it difficult for us to bounce back," said Thai coach Jittipol Toomanee.
"We’re smaller than other European players, so ending the tournament at the sixth is not bad at all," added Jittipol.
Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=9&theme=A&usrsess=1&id=19292
