Czechia triumph as first-time Challenger Cup winners and qualify for VNL 2025!

Czechia are the last winners of the women’s Volleyball Challenger Cup. They triumphed in the final edition of the tournament, claiming not only their first gold in the history of the competition, but also the right to compete in the Volleyball Nations League for the first time next year. In Sunday’s final in Manila, Czechia defeated Puerto Rico in four sets, right after Vietnam also celebrated a historic success, beating Belgium by the same score for the bronze.

• Watch Volleyball Challenger Cup 2024 replays and highlights on VBTV

In the gold medal match, Czechia produced a 3-1 (25-23, 25-20, 18-25, 25-18) victory over Puerto Rico, led by 23-year-old opposite Gabriela Orvosova with a match-high 25 points, including two blocks. It was the fantastic Czech blocking that was key to their success. The European team raised as many as 16 kill blocks, twice as many as Puerto Rico’s eight. The NORCECA representatives scored two more attacking points and two more aces than their opponents, but also committed three more unforced errors. In attack, Orvosova registered a 61% success rate. Outside hitter and captain Michaela Mlejnkova spiked the match winner to finish with 18 points, while her cross-court teammate Helena Havelkova added another 12. Middle blocker Magdalena Jehlarova also reached the double digits, putting away 11 points. 18-year-old Puerto Rican opposite Grace Lopez led her team’s scorers with 23 points. Outside hitters Paola Santiago and Stephanie Rivera finished with 18 and 12 points, respectively.

It was Czechia’s second medal in the competition, after their silver in 2019. Puerto Rico collected their first silver, after previously picking up two bronze medals in 2018 and 2022.

“It’s unbelievable! I am so proud of my team!” was all Gabriela Orvosova could tell VBTV right after the match.

“She is just speechless!” Magdalena Jehlarova added. “It was so much fun to play here in the Philippines. The fans here are amazing. Huge props for them! They created a great atmosphere and it was so fun.”

Vietnam secured a historic bronze at their second Challenger Cup appearance. Earlier on Sunday, they achieved a 3-1 (25-23, 23-25, 25-20, 25-17) victory over Belgium in the third place match to celebrate the team’s first-ever medal from a world-level competition, as well as the team’s first-ever win over a European opponent. Despite the Belgium’s great blocking performance with 11 stuffs against only four by Vietnam, the Asian team outplayed their European opponents in spiking (53-48 in attack points), but mostly capitalized on the abundant unforced errors that the Belgians made, 38 against only 22 by Vietnam.

Vietnamese outside Thi Bich Tuyen Nguyen was on fire again, hammering out a fantastic 35 points towards her team’s success. She made as many as 84 attempts in attack to score 34 points and added one kill block to her match-high tally. Middle blocker Thi Trinh Nguyen contributed another 10 points to Vietnam’s win. Three players reached the double digits on Belgium’s side – outside Manon Stragier with 14, opposite Pauline Martin with 13, and middle Britt Fransen with 11, the latter achieving five kill blocks.

“After yesterday’s loss we felt a little upset, but we still had one more game to play and we had to recover mentally. We said we should try our best because this is a big chance to play against one of Europe’s teams,” said Vietnam’s outside and captain Thi Thanh Thuy Tran after the bronze medal match. “We are very happy and very excited, because we achieved a win over a big team like this. We learned a lot of lessons from this tournament and we hope that my team can get better every day.”

Volleyball Challenger Cup 2024: all results

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