Korean women’s volleyball team middle blocker Lee Da-hyun (Hyundai E&C) said she will overcome the crisis with a long breath.
The Korean women’s volleyball team, including Lee, departed for Poland via Incheon International Airport on Thursday and will compete in the Paris 2024 Olympic Qualifiers in Łódź, Poland, from June 16-24. After the qualifiers, the team will travel to Hangzhou for the Asian Games.
Korea finished sixth at the recently concluded Asian Women’s Volleyball Championship, falling short of their goal of a top-four finish after a disappointing loss to Vietnam.
Without a turnaround in fortunes, Korea will face an uphill battle in the upcoming Paris Olympic Qualifiers and Hangzhou Asian Games.
“We went to the Asian Championships to restore our pride, but the results were not what we wanted, and honestly, the players were shaken up. It was hard to know what to do as bad situations were repeated,” she confessed.
“But we couldn’t just sit there. We tried to shake off the bad things as quickly as possible, focus on our goals for the rest of the tournament, and recover our mentality.”
After the Asian Championships, the team moved back into the Jincheon Athletes’ Village, where they had about five days to prepare before departing. The team will not return to Korea after the Paris Olympic qualifiers, but will go straight to Hangzhou.
“It was true that the mood was down during the five days of training after the Asian Championships,” said Lee. But we all tried to brighten it up by smiling a lot, even if we were forced to. If (the mood) sagged, we were the ones who lost. Fortunately, morale has improved a lot since the last day or two,” he said of the team’s mood.
Lee also tried to create energy at the airport, greeting fans and joking with teammates.
Still, the reality is that rebounding is not easy. After the retirement of Kim Yeon-kyung (Heungkuk Life), South Korea has gone undefeated in the Volleyball Nations League (VNL) for two years in a row, and even a bronze medal at the Asian Games is not an optimistic prospect.
“It’s hard to keep losing games,” Lee said. Athletes need to win to have synergy, and it’s exhausting to not have that,” she said, adding, “Still, it’s important to be ‘steady’ at times like this. Don’t think it’s going to happen right away, but you have to accept where you are (in terms of power) and take a long breath and get up. I don’t want to be impatient and I want to build the team colors one day at a time.”아톰카지노
Meanwhile, Lee also shared his thoughts on the Asian Games, which will be held after the Paris Olympic Qualifiers. He said, “The first goal is a medal. We lost to Vietnam at the Asian Championships, so this time we are aiming to come back with a good attitude and defeat them from the first game.”