Orthmann a scoring force for Germany in VNL 2022

Hanna Orthmann has been feeling more and more comfortable in her new role as Germany’s top scoring option and that showed on Friday, when the 23-year-old outside hitter led her team to their first victory in the Volleyball Nations League 2022.

· Watch all VNL 2022 matches live on Volleyball TV.

With 22 points scored by Orthmann, the Germans swept Tokyo Olympic semifinalists Korea in Shreveport-Bossier City, USA 3-0 (25-22, 25-15, 25-16), to celebrate their first win in the tournament after a 3-1 loss to a Brazil and five-set defeat to Japan.

“We played good matches against Brazil and Japan,” Orthmann said after the end of the match. “We could have won both matches, but ended up losing after we made some mistakes. Today was an important game for us, we knew we needed to win. We did a good job in resetting and I think this time we not only had a good start, but were also able to keep that level until the end.”

Orthmann was in great form throughout the match, registering 22 points, 12 more than Germany’s second-best scorer, middle blocker Anastasia Cekulaev, and nine more than Korean outside hitter Sohwi Kang. The 1.88m-tall outside hitter hit at an impressive 56.25% efficiency rate, turning 19 of her 32 attempts into points, and also added three blocks in key moments of the match.

The young outside hitter has been positioned in a more central role with the German national team after the arrival of new coach Vital Heynen, who had to deal with the departure of high-scoring opposite Louisa Lipmann, who recently moved to beach volleyball.

Volleyball Nations League 2022: Full schedule and results

Orthmann was important to the Germans' offence right from the start of the match, as she scored the team’s first point at 1-1 by using her power to tool the Korean block. She came up big at the end of the set too, scoring consecutive points to give her team a comfortable lead at 23-17 before producing a monster block to take the set 25-22.

She was also a key figure at the end of the second set, making an important dig that led to the 21st German point and scoring at 24-15 with a powerful sharp angle hit that fell right on the line. As in the first set, one of her blocks generated the final point of the German 25-15 win.

“The match only ends when it’s over, so I think you have to fight until the end,” she commented about her fighting spirit. “There’s no time to rest or take it easy, especially at this level. I think we fought together as a team and I’m proud of what we did.”

The German outside hitter had scored 15 points against Brazil and another 12 against Japan, while coming off the bench, and has now tallied 49, ranking among the top scorers in the entire event.

Orthmann and her German teammates will complete their match schedule in the first week of the VNL 2022 on Sunday at 12.00 local time (17.00 GMT), when they face Poland.

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