Juan Carlos Cruz, Coach of Puerto Rico: Our reception which is one of our strong areas has not been good and we have not been able to run our quick offence to do some damage. We can’t match the blocking of the strong teams here so we depend on good passing to put in practice our plan.
Hui Ruoqi, Captain of China: This match was important for us but we had some problems in the game. We need to improve on many things because the competition is getting harder and harder. We need to train more and be ready all the time. Having young players in the team is good, but sometimes the level is really good, sometimes it’s not. These young players are passionate so we have to use them more.
Yarimar Rosa, Captain of Puerto Rico: I think we started the first set really well. We played their level but then we made some unforced errors after that. We could not recover emotionally and went down after that. In some moments when we were winning, they would easily catch up and we would commit mistakes again.
Lynda Morales, Player of Puerto Rico: We made way too many errors – serving out, net touches. Overall we made more unforced errors than the other team. In the first set we definitely played very well, the second set not so much, then the third set we just let them get away. We started with a completely different line-up. China’s outside hitter (Zhu Ting) was just hitting over us. It was difficult for us to even try to control her. She was definitely a factor against us in the match.
They pressed us very well on service. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that as much back. Our passing kind of died off and affected our offence completely. Our middle blockers, me included, were not able to attack and provide as many points as we usually would like to because we had inconsistent passing. But we will try to fight and we just need to focus on our next match now.
I am enjoying the experience. My team knows that we are the underdogs in the competition and we just try to play every match. A couple of the sets that we’ve played here were very close and our goal is to play as well as we can. It’s our first Olympics. It’s the first time in Puerto Rican volleyball history that the women’s team has qualified for the Olympics. We just want to make an impression and try to do as best as we can.