Toronto, Canada, September 15, 2016 - Elsa Baquerizo and Liliana Fernandez of Spain rallied from an 8-2 deficit in the third and deciding set here Thursday afternoon at the SWATCH FIVB World Tour Finals on Polson Pier to score a win over Canada's Jamie Broder and Kristina
Valjas.
With their 2-1 (19-21, 21-13, 16-14) Pool C in 52 minutes, the Spaniards were defeat the Broder and Valjas for the fourth time in six FIVB World Tour meetings between the two teams.
Elsa Baquerizo - (on bouncing back from 2-8 in the third) "Sometime we’ve done it but it’s not a normal thing. I think it’s important because we stayed strong. There were a lot of mistakes, a lot of reception mistakes. Mentally we strayed strong and we turned it around and we kept fighting."
(on handling Jamie’s serve) The ball floats a lot here and for me it’s pretty weird here. We’re all having problems with the reception. There’s not really a good side."
Lili Fernandez - "We knew the strategy it’s just we were not doing our sideout which is the main problem we had. But we defended and blocked a lot and that’s why we were able to come back."
(being back on the court for first time since Long Beach) "It felt very good. At the beginning we were a bit shaky or nervous or not used to competition. We struggled a little bit in the first set, it was very close. The second set we started strong and knew what we had to do and we did it.
The third probably we started a little bit with too much confidence because the second was kind of easy."
(Elsa interjecting) "That was her, not me. I wasn’t confident at all."
Kristina Valjas - "It’s my first time and its incredible. I wish we could do it all the time. I hope we can come back here next year. I’m just excited for all my friends, all my competitors that I see all the time on tour in their home cities and I’m excited for them to be in mine and explore it and appreciate because I love Toronto."
"I think they never let up on their serving and they put us in trouble with our sideout. Their defense was strong because they set it up with their tough serves and when you can’t really put a strong attack forward, you can’t sideout and they built some points up there."
"We know that Lili is a big blocker, she’s blocked us many times before. Some of her blocks, though, were sneaky and kind of surprised me. There were a few where I didn’t think she was going to be there and she was and she was really on her blocking game."