Bahrain juniors get tough West Asian volleyball draw
TDT | Manama
The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Bahrain’s junior national volleyball team have been drawn in Group A for this year’s West Asian Junior Volleyball Championship, which is scheduled to be held July 22 to 31 in Al Qatif, Saudi Arabia.
The draw took place yesterday for the 10-team competition, supervised by the West Asia Volleyball Association. For the preliminary round, the nationals are alongside their counterparts from Lebanon, the UAE, Jordan and Iraq, while Group B consists of Qatar, Kuwait, Syria, Palestine and hosts Saudi.
The Bahrainis have just completed the first stage of their overseas training camp held in Slovenia, in preparation for the West Asian tournament as well as for the 21st Asian Men’s U20 Volleyball Championship, which will be held in the Kingdom next month.
They continue their camp in Bulgaria over the coming period. The juniors are coached by Tunisian tactician Saber Abdulwahed. The Bahrainis are at their camp with a 12-player squad that included Hussain Ali, Redha Matrook, Ali Al Bosta, Hassan Al Warqa, Sayed Hashem Issa, Ali Hussain, Ali Habib, Sadeq Marhoon, Sayed Ahmed Murtadha, Hussain Abdulredha, Hassan Aliwi and Abbas Ihsan.
In Slovenia, they played a number of friendly matches against the junior teams of the hosts, Austria and Iran. They are next set to play three tune-up games with the Bulgarian junior team during this next phase of their overseas camp. Bahrain are in Pool A for the 18-nation Asian championship alongside Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.
Pool B features Iran, Japan and India; Pool C includes South Korea, Qatar and Kuwait; Pool D consists of Thailand, Kazakhstan and the UAE; Pool E features Iraq, Australia and Bangladesh and Pool F comprises China, Taipei and Pakistan.
This year’s Asian under-20 event will be the third time Bahrain is hosting. The Kingdom previously also staged the tournament in 2014 and 2018. In the last edition in 2018, the Bahrainis almost made it to the quarter-finals, but suffered a heartbreaking five-set loss to Australia in the Round of 16.
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