In the end, participation in the play-offs for promotion to the B2 series of the women’s Serie C volleyball championship for the team representing the Gulf of Diana Volleyball. With the victory on the last day 3-1 (23-25; 25-23; 25-20; 26-24) and the simultaneous defeat of Albaro against VGP Genova 3-1, Vasco Lanfranchi conquers third place the final.
The team from Diane had entered the starting line of the play-offs with 6 points in fifth position (the result of the results obtained against the other three teams coming from their group) while the top of the table was 11 points away from Albaro’s 17 and 8 and 6 points from Celle’s 14 and VGP’s 12 respectively. At the end of the championship the situation is: Celle first (and promoted to B2) with 35 points, VGP second with 34 (both from the same group as Diano), OF Vasco Lanfranchi third with 24 points and Albaro fourth with 22.
“We had some exceptional playoffs – comments the president Anfossi – we won 6 games out of 8 and of the two we lost, one was 3-2. We had set fourth place as our maximum objective because it was unthinkable to recover 11 points from Albaro, but instead we recovered 13. It’s a shame that we were no longer able to play against Celle and Vgp, counting on the results of the first phase. However, I would have signed up for the third place finish at the beginning of the year, but at this point it’s a shame about the November crisis, when we lost 3 consecutive games (two of which did not allow us to bring points to the second phase), otherwise we would have been vying for promotion“.
However, a remarkable result for one of the youngest teams in the championship (of those who reached the play offs only Cogoleto and Futura Ceparana have a younger squad) which allows us to dream for next year.
“We often forget that in our lineup we constantly have at least 3 under 18s on the pitch and in the squad there are 8 out of 15 – says coach Pontacolone – it is clear that in the first phase we had some continuity problems. Instead, the consistency of results in the playoffs makes me think that next year we can be even more solid because even the youngest will have acquired some experience in the category. Now we have taken a few days off but from Friday we will start preparing for the last match of the season: we have a semi-final of the Liguria Cup to play and it is an objective that we care about very much“.
