Four games are on the slate once again at the 2024 Paris Olympics volleyball tournament with two from each the men’s and women’s side. Entering the final matchday on the women’s side, there were still plenty of fates to be determined based on where the dominoes fell.
First up was the women, as the Dominican Republic took on the Netherlands and Japan faced Kenya.
On the men’s side, two of the top teams in the world, Poland and Italy, squared off for supremacy in Pool B while Canada and Serbia wrapped up the men’s pool play schedule against each other.
Women’s Pool C: Dominican Republic 3, Netherlands 1
The Netherlands entered the tournament as one of the teams that figured to contend for the final third-place spot that got through to the knockout rounds.
When the eighth-ranked Dutch came away from their first two games with just a single point, they put themselves in a dire position as they tried to get out.
That only got worse Saturday morning as they were upset by the 11th-ranked Dominican Republic and crashed out of the tournament in embarrassing fashion.
The Dominicans dropped a very tight first set, 25-22, but responded back with three straight set wins to complete one of the bigger upsets in the tournament so far. Coming in Pool C always looked the toughest on paper with no easy games on the schedule, and the Netherlands has found that out the hard way.
Yonkaira Paola Peña Isabel was the dominant player of the match with 28 points on 26/63 swings. No other played on either side had more than 13.
With the win, the Dominican Republic has advanced to the quarterfinals as it has in its previous two Olympic appearances. The Dominicans will be hoping to better their previous Olympic appearances, when they lost in the quarterfinals both times.
Women’s Pool B:
With the Dominican Republic’s win over the Netherlands, Japan was eliminated from the tournament. This is the second-straight Olympics in which Japan has crashed out in pool play, a massive disappointment for a country that was on the medal stand not too long ago at London 2012.
The Japanese also entered having finished second at the most recent Volleyball Nations League and looked like a dark horse in the tournament.
They got a brutal draw with Poland and Brazil in their group and failed to pick up a single point from their first two games, winning only a single set. That left only a game against Keyna to send out their captain, Sarina Nishida, out on a good note. The 28-year-old announced before the Olympics started this would be her last tournament with the Japanese national team.
The Japanese cruised to victory with a straight-sets win in dominant fashion, 25-17 25-22 25-12 meaning Nishida goes out with a win. However, this could not have been the ending to her career with the national team she imagined.
For Kenya, they leave Paris without winning a set and have now only won two of the 54 sets they’ev played at the Olympic Games.
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