Bahrain’s top young national team volleyball players, representing the University of Bahrain (UOB), last night captured the gold medals in the men’s volleyball tournament at the University International Sports Festival 2023, which wraps up today in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
The Bahrainis secured the title with a four-set victory over the Derzhavin Tambov State University team from Russia in the final.
The UOB team battled hard in the match from the very first ball to come away with the coveted crown.
They convincingly won the first set, which they closed out with an emphatic Hussain Ehsan kill.
The Russians were able to level the proceedings with a strong second set, but the Bahrainis roared back in the third, and then rode their momentum to the finish, sealing the victory with a 3-1 (25-21, 15-25, 25-20, 25-21) score line.
Ehsan came away with a pair of individual awards for his impressive performance in the tournament.
He was named both the Most Valuable Player and the Best Opposite of the event.
Other individual awardees were Best Outside Hitter Dmitrii Lepekhin and Best Libero Egor Matveev, both from Derzhavin Tambov State; and Best Setter Chong Liu and Best Middle Blocker Zhenbang Gao, both from bronze-medallists China University of Petroleum (UPC).
The Chinese came away with the final podium spot after defeating Urmia University of Iran in four sets in their classification contest yesterday.
Aside from Ehsan, some of UOB’s other top players included Hassan Alaiwi, Sadeq Marhoon and Hussain Ramadhan, to name only a few.
Last night’s final wrapped up an undefeated run for the Bahrainis in Russia, where they won all five of their matches.
In the semi-finals, they defeated UPC 3-1 to book their clash with Derzhavin Tambov State.
Prior to that, they defeated University of Zimbabwe in straight sets, and also had a thrilling fiveset win over Ural State University of Railway Transport from Russia.
In their opening fixture, UOB defeated Namangan Engineering-Construction Institute from Uzbekistan 3-0.
UOB is one of around 250 universities from more than 90 countries around the world taking part in this year’s University International Sports Festival 2023.
The event features more than 4,000 athletes, both men and women, competing in nearly 200 events in 14 sports.
