Aug. 23 USA-Egypt Press Conference Quotes

Liz McMahon
On problems in the 3rd: I think we just had to resort back to playing our USA Volleyball, and go on the offense and stop being on our heels. We knew they would fight back, but I think we should have been more prepared. I’m happy with the results though.

We’re just taking it one game at a time. We’re going to prepare tonight for the semis tomorrow against Japan.

On what they did well: I think it took a lot of strong swings and we didn’t back down swinging-wise. We really started to get emotionally into the match.

Coach Rod Wilde
On problems in the 3rd: As a coach, you try to give them inspiration, but the bottom line is it still has to come from the athletes. We’ve seen it throughout this tournament, where when they want to play well, they do. Sometimes we don’t mentally check in there as strongly as we could. We’ve got to get better at that because we’re coming up against some very, very good teams. Japan is a very, very good team. If we aren’t playing at a good, high level, they’ll make you pay for it.

On what they did well: I thought we swung for deep corners pretty well, and hit high. That is one thing we did well. We had some good statistics from Taylor Simpson hitting-wise. Liz did a nice job. She put some right side blocks up there that were really solid. We’ve got to play better. We have to see each opportunity that we’re out there as an opportunity to play better. We did it for short bursts, but we still have to do it for long periods of time.

I thought we came out a little flat tonight. We had such a big emotional win last night that we just were not at our best. To Egypt's credit they took advantage of this and fought hard to try and win. Fortunately we were able to get a couple of key blocks at the end to finish the match.

On Japan: They are a very smart team. They’re going to make you play a lot of balls, and that’s what we’re not strong at right now. When the ball comes back over, we don’t always make a good ball control play, so it will force us to be better at that. They’re very, very smart little hitters. They’re going to use our big long arms as targets to try to hit off them. We’re going to spend some time tomorrow staying low, not allowing the hitters to hit off us.

We’re obviously very happy to be in the semifinals and have the opportunity to make it into the medal round. We are still developing our team, trying to gain an identify for us. When we play well, we play very well. I hope we’ll play very well tomorrow.

On Japan: Japan’s a very skilled team. They make you play the ball multiple times, so we’re going to have to be good at being able to get the ball back over. Maybe it takes two, three swings to get a kill. That’s how they play the game. Obviously physically we’re going to have an advantage, but their skills will counter that advantage unless we play very well. They also serve very tough, so we’re going to need to ball handle and pass the ball in order to get our offense together.

Captain Samantha Cash
I feel like we played a great match, except for the third game. We’ve really learned how to push through in three games and keep on playing hard, and knowing that we need to push the entire time.

We are very happy to have won our pool and be able make the semi finals against Japan. We know that they are a tough team and we will have to play our best to win.

Tags: 2010 U.S. Girls' Youth Olympic Team, 2010 Youth Olympic Games, Liz McMahon, Rod Wilde, Samantha Cash, YOG, youth, Youth Olympic Games, Youth Olympics