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.