Olympic Women's Volleyball Challenge

The USA women were here in Victoria during March, 1999, for competition in Australia leading up to the Sydney 2000 Games.

The promotional material for the Challenge compared the US women's team as 1995 World Grand Prix champions, Olympic silver medallists in 1984 and Olympic bronze medallists in 1992 with Team Australia's current highest ever world ranking of 30. And the difference was not only in the figures.

Australia was well and truly outplayed in each of the five matches against their more experienced opponents. The US were here as part of their warm-up for the Sydney 2000 Games, and will return again for more matches leading up to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

The Australian Head Coach, Brad Saindon, was nonetheless well pleased with the experience gained by his players, and the team did improve their play over the week.

Even with the new rally point scoring system, the results were not pretty for the Australians...

Match #1 9/3 USA def AUS 3-0 (25-16, 25-12, 25-15)
Match #2 10/3 USA def AUS 3-0 (25-16, 25-19, 25-10)
Match #3 12/3 USA def AUS 3-0 (25-15, 25-14, 25-17)
Match #4 14/3 USA def AUS 3-0 (25-20, 25-9, 25-15)
Match #5 15/3 USA def AUS 3-0 (25-12, 25-7, 25-16)

In fact, Kev Lentin also scored the first match under the traditional sideout system and it turned out that it would have taken about the same amount of time.