Coach Saegusa also wants his side to "keep working on attack and counterattack"
Rosario, Argentina, August 18, 2017 - According to both sides, a bit of nervousness was there for Japan and Peru as it was their first match in Rosario. Japan coach Daichi Saegusa credited his girls for dealing with those emotions and building their win from that.
Daichi Saegusa, Japan coach: “The girls were very nervous and that made things hard for us, but we reached our level on the third set. Despite the many errors we had, we finished as winners and now we have a chance to improve our mentality, to keep working on attack and counterattack. I am confident we will progress as the matches go on - the girls are still gathering experience but they are also continuously growing.”
Yuki Nishikawa, Japan player: “We made a good start and caused Peru to fail in reception against our serves. That helped us all along the game. This was a very important match for us; we were a bit scared but we were concentrated too and little by little we did better.”
Marco Queiroga, Peru coach: “It was a very beautiful game. On the first two sets we played point by point and we could have won them, but some mistakes on the final moments caused us to lose both. It’s something typical of this age, of still not having a lot of experience. Japan came back stronger after that and our spirit went down. I’m happy anyway - we played against the Asian champions and we could have won, that means the team did very well.”
Flavia Montes, Peru captain: “As it was the first game all of us - the girls and I were a bit nervous. We could recover on the second set, but we couldn’t seize the 5-point lead we had at one point. We have to keep training and be mentally stronger when things don’t go our way.”