By Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK – The SKW women’s team remain a dominant force on the Namibia volleyball scene. The team from Olympia demonstrated this after beating the talented women in uniform, the Namibia Defence Force, 3 sets to 0. The game between the two rivals was one of the most exciting matches of the weekend, especially the first two sets.
Both teams played hard, but the Defence team could not break through the aggressive defence of SKW, lead by Elina Veijo, combined with the intelligent settings of Lorreta du Toit. Even though NDF was fighting very hard, one could see that Anna Henghono, benched due to an arm injury, was missed.
The second game in the women’s division was between the Khomas Police and DTS. DTS lost all the sets, as they could not stop the fearless spikes from Helena Iitula. The students of the Polytechnic of Namibia and UNAM also battled it out on the court with the Polytech managing to win by 3 sets to 0. Mariskia January easily found space to place the ball in UNAM’s court almost every time she touched the ball.
The game between Revivals of Katutura and Oshikoto Police from Tsumeb, unfortunately did not take place due to transport problems. The team from Tsumeb therefore forfeited the points to Revivals.
In the men’s division, the Namibia Defence Force A-team won both their games this past weekend against UNAM and Eleven Warriors.
The men in uniform started the game against UNAM very strong in the first two sets, but the students responded aggressively in the third set with Shawn Simvula’s high spikes and Elifas Gotlieb’s quick attacks that the NDF blockers Onesmus Shipiki and Lotto Negumbo found hard to stop.
The fourth set was very exciting as the expectation was that UNAM drive the game in the deciding set after leading with 21 points to 18, just 4 points short of winning the set. NDF recovered well to win the set as UNAM’s blockers failed to stop Nyambe Siyendi, the upcoming spiker from the Zambezi Region.
One of the most entertaining matches of the weekend was the game between Eleven Warriors (EWVC) and NDF B. EWVC started positively by winning the first set, but the Defence B-team recovered and won the second set in thrilling action, which saw the score going up to 26 in favour of the B-team. What kept the spectators on their feet, was the neck–to-neck action in the fourth set.
The solid block the NDF B-team demonstrated in the first three sets, was not a match for the strong spikes of Friedo Nanghanda, Moyo Shiseo, Gabriel Kalimbo and Lisias Mwandingi. Even though both teams showed courage in this set, NDF B could not resist the pressure from the Army Headquarter Team from Grootfontein, and lost the set 28:30.
The next games will be played on 2 August 2014 in Windhoek for the men’s division and Grootfontein for the women’s division.