Junior Girls Team’s Event at the European Youth Championships Ostrava
In Junior Girls Team’s Event at the European Youth Championships in Ostrava Czech Republic took the best from being hosts of the tournament. They are the only team to upset the packing order in the top of the Groups and to book position no. one after being seeded one place below. Russia Italy and Poland justified their rankings and proceed to the knock out phase from the leading positions in their respective groups.
Czech Republic overcame top seeded Germany in Group C to book the top spot and today they confirmed the status by overcoming Turkey. In thrilling match that easily could went the other side hosts proved better.
“Turkey put us under severe pressure. Ece HARAC overcame Gabriela STEPANOVA in the opening match and then after being 2-0 up in games Zdena BLASKOVA faced recovery from Ozge YILMAZ to 2-2. That made us all nervous and put extra tension. In case of BLASKOVA’s defeat Klara HRABICOVA was next in line to play and that was her first match. By putting her in the match after 0-2 down knowing it is her first appearance at the tournament we could be in danger to lose even whole match. However Zdena managed to finish her duel successfully after five games and Klara was very good against Gamze COTRA” said coach Tomas VRNAK.
HRABICOVA showed brave face and succeeded in five games.
“I was afraid at the start. It was my first match here but in the second half of the game I felt better. I realized my game was very good and I enjoyed the atmosphere in the venue. It is so nice to play in front of the home crowd ” said HRABICOVA.
Germany finished second in that Group to book the place among top 16 teams.
“We did not have time to talk a lot about our defeat against Czech Republic. We were focused on our match against Netherlands. I am very pleased with girls’ performance today ” said Germany’s coach Dana WEBER.
In Group A Russia confirmed their status and overcame France Serbia and Belarus. France is second with one defeat.
“We are very confident. Unlike the results predicts we have few hard moments in our duels but we were ready for it. We lost only one individual match here but lot of games were close ” said Anastasia KOLISH.
Poland also justified their position. Today they played against Slovenia the team that surprisingly faced the favorites in the match for the top spot in the Group. Slovenia was seeded at the position no. four in Group B but beat Slovakia and Sweden yesterday. It opened great opportunity to them but Poland showed no mercy. They succeeded in straight matches.
“I am very happy for my performance ” stated Anna WEGRZYN.” My sister Katarzyna struggled yesterday and she was very sad about it. Today she managed to play at the top of her game so we had less problems against Slovenia.”
Italy is at the top of Group D. Jamila LAURENTI had an opportunity to take a little rest whilst Gaia MONFARDINI Arianna CRISTOBAL and Elisa ARMANINI beat Spain to justified their leading position. Romania finished at he second position. They overcame Croatia today in the match for second place.
“It was very hard group. We lost to Italy yesterday. I felt very tired after close match against Spain but today we restored our strength and we continue to fight for medal ” said Tania PLAIAN.
Results here
Facebook here
Twitter here
Flickr here
Instagram here
