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 fun. “I imply, dude, we’re used to taking part in two, possibly three video games most in a row. We performed six video games in a brief period of time and probably the most emotional video games of your life.
“I couldn’t be extra prepared for a trip. I’m prepared.”
Effectively, your complete USA males’s workforce can take that trip after successful 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 observe: Veteran reverse Matt Anderson, who at 37 had a incredible event, mentioned he’s on board to proceed to Los Angeles 2028. A few of teammates, nevertheless, are probably executed with national-team play, however nothing was confirmed right here.
The recap follows and so do notes in regards to the males’s gold-medal match Saturday, a semifinal ladies’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 workforce wanted its finest 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 received gold in 1984 and 1988, bronze in 1992, received all of it once more in 2008, and took bronze in 2016. In Tokyo in 2021, the American didn’t get out of pool play. The purpose 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 a bit of annoying, however we obtained it executed.”
That was not misplaced on coach John Speraw.
“I’m pleased with the boys for the power to regroup, reset, and compete with the vitality that they performed with in the present day,” Speraw mentioned. “I believed it was actually spectacular.”
Aaron Russell, who performed in Rio however was harm 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 pleased 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 gymnasium and work on one thing and flush one thing out in the event you get into a foul rhythm. For him to come back again was simply incredible.”
“By some means everyone pulled it collectively and did what we wanted 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 massive 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 longer term however nice for Italian volleyball.”
Neither workforce 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 lower shot from the precise aspect 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 completely different however lasted longer as each groups battled however couldn’t separate. At 25-25, Shoji obtained hit within the left shoulder by a shot that had such affect it went untouched all the way in which again to the Italy aspect of the ground within the again left nook. The obnoxious enviornment DJ — which is a narrative for one more day — had one in every of 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 a giant dig by Shoji and yet 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 workforce capped the NCAA males’s season in early Could with its second straight title. He took two entire days off after which obtained into the USA gymnasium in Anaheim.
Anderson is prepared for a break, however he will likely be returning to his professional workforce, Ziraat Bankkart in Ankara, Tûrkiye, this fall.
His ambition, he mentioned, was relaxation, beers and pushing again to go to Turkiye so long as attainable.
“Miller Lite if you wish to sponsor me,” Anderson mentioned with fun. “I’m going to dive into household time, possibly even flip my cellphone off for a few weeks and simply be with my spouse and youngsters and family members.”
However with no retirement in sight.
“I’m tentatively signing on for L.A. 2028,” he mentioned, “however taking it 12 months by 12 months. Taking it 12 months by 12 months to see personally how I’m doing bodily, mentally, how my household is doing, as a result of I received’t let volleyball take away from that.”
Saturday’s volleyball at South Paris Area 1
The lads’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 ladies 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 is not going to solely play for gold, however win a medal.
The USA-Italy ladies’s ultimate is at 1 p.m. Sunday (7 a.m. Jap, 4 a,m. Pacific). Solely six nations have received Olympic ladies’s gold: the USA, China, Cuba, Brazil, Japan and the previous USSR.
Italy (5-0) obtained 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 celebrity reverse Melissa Vargas, who leads the event in kills, was held to 17. She was averaging an unimaginable 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 ladies’s event
You don’t need to be an reverse or lefty or each, nevertheless it helps. By way of the ladies’s semifinals, the highest 5 attackers within the ladies’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 boys’s aspect, the USA’s Matt Anderson was third in kills with 72 and Aaron Russell was sixth with 67.
The USA’s massive blockers
By way of the semis, Chiaka Ogbogu topped all ladies’s blockers with 21, a mean of 4.2 per match. Teammate Haleigh Washington was tied for fifth with 13. Plummer is ninth with 9.
On the boys’s aspect, Taylor Averill was tied for first with Germany’s Gyorgy Grozer with 15.
