Chinese Army downs Shanghai at China Club Volleyball Tournament

BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai men's volleyball team, five-time successive champion of China national volleyball league, suffered a bitter loss to the Chinese Army at the China Club Volleyball Tournament which opened here on Wednesday.

The Shanghai players started strongly and captured the first-set 25-21. However, with the absence of its core player Shen Qiong who is now busy preparing for the coming August Olympic Games as the national team captain, the Shanghai team kept producing unforced spiking and serving errors to go down in the following two sets 19-25 and 22-25.

The young Shanghai players bounced back to win the fourth set 25-21. However, the Chinese Army men managed to stem their winning momentum at the beginning of the last set with a stunning 7-0 run.

The army men looked more relaxed and they exhibited mighty fierce attacks and won the decider 15-7.

Ju Genyin, head coach of Shanghai, ascribed the loss of the match to the unstable performance of young players in a strange environment.

"Our players behaved very nervous at the court and kept making unforced mistakes," said Ju. "It's debut of the Capital Indoor Stadium as an Olympic Games venue after months of renovation today. It's big and a great place for competition, however, for my player who are get used to a smaller-sized venue, It has become a challenge."

Zhong Weijun, a formal national team player and a major scorer of Chinese Army, showed strong ambition for the future of his team.

"Our goal is to go into the final," said Zhong. "The final match day (April 20) is also my birthday and my birthday wish to re-enter the national team."

In the other men's match between Liaoning and Henan, which ranked the second and the third place at the national league respectively, Liaoning proved its predominance over its opponent with a 3-2 hard win (23-25, 25-23, 25-22, 20-25, 15-10).

A total of four men's and four women's teams participate in the five-day tournament, namely Shanghai, Liaoning, Henan and the Chinese Army for the men's and Tianjin, Liaoning, Jiangsu and the Chinese Army for the women's. As top clubs in the country, these teams boast a number of well-known former national players.

The tournament is held at the Beijing Institute of Technology Gymnasium and Capital Indoor Stadium, with the preliminaries held at both venues on April 16-18, and the semifinals and finals at the Capital Indoor Stadium on April 19-20.