Spikers looking to strike it big

Spikers looking to strike it big

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Being less than 185 centimeters tall, they may fall short of
being the ideal volleyball players, but Lien Chien-chih of
Chinese Taipei and Yasuyuki Ueno of Japan hope that their strong
showing in the just-concluded U-185 World Volleyball Championship
will eventually provide leverage to a higher level of
competition.

They emerged as the top two best scorers in the five-team
world volleyball championship in Jakarta, for players under 185
centimeters tall, which was won by Indonesia.

Lien's luck is improving already as he was recruited by his
national team, while Ueno is still playing for his university.

While Lien's strength over the net largely contributed to
Taiwan's success in taking second place -- with three wins and
one defeat -- Ueno had to be content with fourth place for his
Japanese team, with two wins and two defeats.

But nobody can deny that both players were the stars of their
respective teams. Both showed their powerful cross spikes that
breached the opponents' defending line.

At the end of the competition, Lien Chien-Chih was named best
scorer with 100 points, while Yasuyuki Ueno came second with 84
points.

Lien, 22, said he was motivated to take up the sport by the
fact that his height had reached 1.78 meters by the age of 11.

Being inspired by his older sister, an amateur volleyballer,
Lien, a student of the Hualien Normal University in Taipei, began
to play the sport seriously, and became a team member of the
national squad when he was in his last year of high school.

The Jakarta competition was his fifth international appearance
for the national team.

Meanwhile, the 21-year-old player Yasuyuki Ueno from Hiroshima
said he had been lured into playing volleyball when he was 10
years old.

"I started playing volleyball because my friends were asking
me to join them playing volleyball at school," Ueno said.

His love of volleyball became stronger when he enrolled to
study at Fukuyama Heisei University and was picked as one of the
university team members.

Both Lien and Ueno hope that their spiking power will bring
their respective national teams to better places in the next
championships.

"I want to be a volleyball star in the future. I hope I can
make it to the national team. I really want to play for the
national team -- even if it is only once in a lifetime," Ueno
said.