Olympics
August 9, 2024
PARIS — First-time Olympian Taylor Averill simply shook his head.
“What an emotional curler coaster the Olympics is,” Averill mentioned with amusing. “I imply, dude, we’re used to taking part in two, perhaps three video games most in a row. We performed six video games in a brief period of time and essentially the most emotional video games of your life.
“I couldn’t be extra prepared for a trip. I’m prepared.”
Effectively, all the USA males’s crew can take that trip after profitable the bronze medal Friday on the Paris Olympics with a sweep of Italy. And it was not simply any sweep, however a knock-down, drag-out volleyball slugfest the USA occurred to win.
“From level one,” TJ DeFalco mentioned. “A dogfight.”
Fast word: Veteran reverse Matt Anderson, who at 37 had a unbelievable event, mentioned he’s on board to proceed to Los Angeles 2028. A few of teammates, nonetheless, are doubtless achieved with national-team play, however nothing was confirmed right here.
The recap follows and so do notes concerning the males’s gold-medal match Saturday, a semifinal girls’s victory for Italy to get into the gold-medal ultimate in opposition to the USA on Sunday, and a few key stats.
USA males, DeFalco bounce again and sweep Italy
When the Individuals misplaced to Poland in 5 within the semifinals on Wednesday, TJ DeFalco had his worst match of the event with 4 kills and two errors in 9 assaults.
His crew wanted its greatest offensive weapon in opposition to Italy and DeFalco responded with a team-high 12 kills, together with the assaults that ended every of the three units. The 25-23, 30-28, 25-24 — and, sure, it was that shut all through — gave the USA its second bronze medal in two Olympics.
The USA gained gold in 1984 and 1988, bronze in 1992, gained all of it once more in 2008, and took bronze in 2016. In Tokyo in 2021, the American did not get out of pool play. The objective right here, in fact, was a gold medal, and there was no hiding the frustration of the loss to Poland
“It was actually laborious to come back after that sport in opposition to Poland,” mentioned veteran libero Erik Shoji, who had 12 digs. “Bodily, mentally, emotionally, I don’t know if I used to be prepared till proper when the primary level began. All of us simply needed to battle as laborious as we are able to. This group has been collectively a very long time and we needed to complete on a excessive and that’s what we did.
“It was somewhat tense, however we bought it achieved.”
That was not misplaced on coach John Speraw.
“I’m happy with the lads for the flexibility to regroup, reset, and compete with the power that they performed with at present,” Speraw mentioned. “I believed it was actually spectacular.”
Aaron Russell, who performed in Rio however was damage for Tokyo, had 11 kills, three blocks and ace. DeFalco, who clearly wears his volleyball feelings on his sleeve, additionally had seven digs.
“I’m happy with him,” Speraw mentioned. “The Olympics are actually laborious. Actually laborious. There’s simply a lot emotion. There’s such urgency to each match and it’s laborious since you don’t have time to get within the fitness center and work on one thing and flush one thing out in the event you get into a nasty rhythm. For him to come back again was simply unbelievable.”
“In some way all people pulled it collectively and did what we would have liked to do,” DeFalco mentioned.
Max Holt, believed to have performed his final volleyball, had six kills, 4 blocks, 4 digs and one ace. Holt, like Anderson and Russell, performed at Penn State.
Anderson had eight kills and 6 digs and Averill had seven kills and a block. Setter Micah Christenson had a kill, a block and eight digs.
Italy’s Alessandro Michieletto had 16 kills and an ace and Yuri Romano had 17 kiils as the 2 left-handers regularly punished the USA. However their teammates mixed for 14 kills.
“Michieletto is a once-in-a-lifetime expertise, to be as large as he’s, a lefty, passing with the ball management, the block and the truth that he’s 22 or 23 years previous,” Anderson mentioned. “It’s scary for the long run however nice for Italian volleyball.”
Neither crew led by greater than two factors within the first set. It was tied 22-22 when the USA took the lead on a serving error and Anderson hit a reduce shot from the fitting facet that gave the Individuals a two-point benefit for the primary time. After an Italy kills, DeFalco hit a monster of a cross-court shot.
The second set wasn’t a lot totally different however lasted longer as each groups battled however couldn’t separate. At 25-25, Shoji bought hit within the left shoulder by a shot that had such impression it went untouched all the best way again to the Italy facet of the ground within the again left nook. The obnoxious enviornment DJ — which is a narrative for an additional day — had one among his higher moments when he performed, “Return to Sender,” the Elvis tune.
However the set was removed from over and didn’t finish till DeFalco crushed a ball to finish a protracted rally for the 30-28 victory.
Lastly, within the third, there six ties after 15-15 and the match ended on an enormous dig by Shoji and one more set-ending kill by DeFalco.
“That was a protracted, actually tight three-set match,” Speraw mentioned.
Speraw, for one, deserves a trip, too. His UCLA crew capped the NCAA males’s season in early Might with its second straight title. He took two entire days off after which bought into the USA fitness center in Anaheim.
Anderson is prepared for a break, however he will likely be returning to his professional crew, Ziraat Bankkart in Ankara, Tûrkiye, this fall.
His ambition, he mentioned, was relaxation, beers and pushing again to go to Turkiye so long as doable.
“Miller Lite if you wish to sponsor me,” Anderson mentioned with amusing. “I’m going to dive into household time, perhaps even flip my telephone off for a few weeks and simply be with my spouse and children and family members.”
However with no retirement in sight.
“I’m tentatively signing on for L.A. 2028,” he mentioned, “however taking it yr by yr. Taking it yr by yr to see personally how I’m doing bodily, mentally, how my household is doing, as a result of I gained’t let volleyball take away from that.”
Saturday’s volleyball at South Paris Enviornment 1
The boys’s gold-medal match is at 1 p.m. when Poland performs France, and the place will likely be rocking for Le Bleu. The sector has been a tough sellout for each match of the event, however when France performs the quantity rises and the taking part in of La Marseillaise, the French nationwide anthem, is one thing else.
The ladies’s bronze-medal match follows at 5:15 when Brazil performs Türkiye.
Italy girls go for first medal after sweeping Serbia
Within the second semifinal Thursday, Italy swept Serbia for the second time in 4 days, this time 25-22, 25-19, 25-22. It’s the first time Italy won’t solely play for gold, however win a medal.
The USA-Italy girls’s ultimate is at 1 p.m. Sunday (7 a.m. Jap, 4 a,m. Pacific). Solely six nations have gained Olympic girls’s gold: the USA, China, Cuba, Brazil, Japan and the previous USSR.
Italy (5-0) bought 21 kills from Paola Egonu, who had a block and two aces. Myriam Sylla had 11 kills and Sarah Fahr had 5 kills and 4 blocks.
Türkiye famous person reverse Melissa Vargas, who leads the event in kills, was held to 17. She was averaging an unbelievable 26.5 kills per match.
When Italy and the USA performed on June 21 within the Volleyball Nations League quarterfinals in Thailand, Italy swept 25-21, 25-21, 25-23. Egonu had 17 kills, two blocks and an ace ace, Sylla had 9 kills and a block, and Far had 5 kills and 4 blocks, eerily much like their stats in opposition to Serbia on Thursday.
In that VNL match, Avery Skinner led the USA with 10 kills and an ace, Haleigh Washington had six kills and three blocks and Jordan Thompson had eight kills.
An reverse girls’s event
You don’t need to be an reverse or lefty or each, but it surely helps. By way of the ladies’s semifinals, the highest 5 attackers within the girls’s event have been:
- Melissa Vargas of Türkiye (123 kills), who’s a righty reverse
- Tijana Boskovic of Serbia (93), a lefty reverse
- Annie Drews of the USA (85), a lefty reverse
- Li Yingying of China (80), who’s a left-handed outdoors
- Paola Egonu of Italy (77), a right-handed reverse
The USA’s right-handed outsides, Avery Skinner and Kathyrn Plummer, are eighth (57) and ninth (55), respectively.
On the lads’s facet, the USA’s Matt Anderson was third in kills with 72 and Aaron Russell was sixth with 67.
The USA’s large blockers
By way of the semis, Chiaka Ogbogu topped all girls’s blockers with 21, a median of 4.2 per match. Teammate Haleigh Washington was tied for fifth with 13. Plummer is ninth with 9.
On the lads’s facet, Taylor Averill was tied for first with Germany’s Gyorgy Grozer with 15.
