U.S. Women's Sitting Volleyball Competing in Egypt
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (April 24, 2008) – The U.S. Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team is in Ismailia, Egypt to compete against some of the top teams in the world and prepare for the Paralymic Games at the World Organization Volleyball for Disabled (WOVD) Intercontinental Cup, which starts Friday and continues through Tuesday (April 29).
The United States is one of nine countries that have sent teams to the tournament. There are also 11 men’s teams competing against each other at the Intercontinental Cup, which the WOVD is planning to hold every four years, prior to the Paralympic Games.
“It is a great opportunity for us,” U.S. Women’s Sitting Team Head Coach Mike Hulett said. “Points will be awarded for finishes that will be used for ranking in Beijing.”
The U.S. Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team is ranked third in the world and qualified for the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing by virtue of its fifth-place finish at the 2006 Sitting Volleyball World Championship and because the Afro Arab zone did not have a champion to send. The U.S. Sitting Women won the bronze medal at the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens.
The U.S. Women’s Sitting Team is in four-team Group B along with Iran, Lithuania and Slovenia. Group A includes Egypt, Latvia, Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine.
The United States will open the tournament against Lithuania on Friday.
“We’ve got Lithuania, a team we lost to at Worlds when we played absolutely horribly,” Hulett said. “Overall we didn’t play close to our potential in that particular match. I think they’re eager to play Lithuania again.”
In Group A, the team from the Netherlands is the reigning world champion and won the silver medal at the Athens Paralympics. However, the U.S. Sitting Women recently defeated the Netherlands in three out of four matches played in the Chicago area.
China, which won the gold medal in Athens, is not participating in the Intercontinental Cup.
The U.S. Women’s Sitting Team will play Iraq on Saturday and Slovenia on Sunday. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played on Monday and the bronze- and gold-medal matches will take place on Tuesday.
