Maribor, Slovenia. The U19 women’s and U20 men’s Middle European Championships played its final dal. In both competitions the rankings ended up being the same with Slovenia finishing first, in front of Austria, Croatia in third and Hungary just missing the podium.
On the last competition day only the gold and bronze medal matches were scheduled and the grand final was between Slovenia and Austria. Slovenia was able to win both of the finals.
Women’s Final: Slovenia – Austria 3-0 (25-22, 26-24, 25-22)
Austrian women did a good job of keeping the game close, however Slovenia did near to perfect from the service line scoring a total of 12 aces alongside only 3 errors led by both of their middle blocker Nika Milosic and Neja Cizman, who combined for 8 aces. In some of the other areas like hitting and blocking Austria actually had a slight advantage, but not enough to offset the effect Slovenia had from the service line.
Men’s Final: Slovenia – Austria 3-0 (25-20, 23-25, 25-16 25-18)
The two best teams of the tournament did not disappoint and delivered a true battle for every point. Slovenia’s setter Nejc Kozar did a good job of getting all his hitters involved and having a balanced attack, with the opposite Nik Mujanovic and outside hitter Rok Bracko being the two top scorers of the match combining for a total of 39 points, from which 5 were also the tournament MVP’s Bracko’s service aces. After Slovenia went ahead and Austria tied the score at 1-1 in sets, Slovenia was even more convincing in the third and fourth set and herewith secured the “double crown” for the host country.
Both of the bronze games were between Croatia and Hungary and both ended in Croatia’s favour. Women of Croatia outperformed Hungary in all aspects of the game and took a clear win to secure the bronze medal. On the men’s side Croatia also emerged as the winner. Despite Hungary statistically having a better reception, Croatia out-blocked them with 13 blocks to 6 and held the Hungarian offence to a 29% hitting percentage and a barely positive hitting efficiency (.001).
Women’s U19 Results
Men’s U20 Results
All the matches can be seen on the local organisers OK Nova KBM Branik Maribor YouTube Channel.
