There was no stopping the march of youth. Haryana learnt it the hard way, defeated in straight sets by an exuberant Association of Indian Universities (AIU) squad 25-21, 25-23, 25-19 in their men’s Group B match of the Federation Cup volleyball tournament here on Tuesday evening.
There were rough edges to the student side, some serves crashing into the net or going long.
Undeterred, the youngsters bashed on, their forceful frontline and resilient backline reducing Haryana’s hardened pros to submission at first and subsequently defeat.
Diagonal spiking by Mujib and captain T. Sathriyan made it hard for Haryana to dig up the hits.
So was AIU’s multiple block up for almost any challenge, giving the youngsters much more than an edge in the jousts.
In the first two games, the AIU lads were behind but that didn’t weaken belief in their abilities and the team worked its way around the odds to move to the fore on the vital last five points.
It was there that the wiry lads, with their lean and mean game, showed maturity beyond their years.
Timely substitutions ensured freshness in AIU’s campaign.
In contrast Haryana’s approach appeared jaded, if not exhausted, evident from the last game’s score in which the northern side really ran out of steam. Sathriyan was duly adjudged best Player-of-the-Match, feted by no less than Dronacharya duo A. Ramana Rao and G.E. Sridharan, both of them also Arjuna Awardees.
The scores: Men: Group B: Association of Indian Universities bt Haryana 25-21, 25-23, 25-19; Indian Railways bt Andhra Pradesh 25-14, 25-22, 25-18.
Women: Kerala bt Maharashtra 25-16, 25-9, 25-11. Monday: Railways bt Maharashtra 25-16, 25-11, 25-15.
