Vietnam seeded sixth at Asian women's volleyball champs

Vietnam has been named No. 6 seed and drawn in Group C along with Japan, Mongolia and Turkmenistan at the 2015 Asian Women’s Volleyball Championship, to be held in Beijing, China from May 20 to 28.

Vietnam is targeting for a high overall ranking in this year’s event.

The biennial nine-day event will gather 16 teams competing in a round robin format in four groups of four, with the top two teams from each group qualifying for the quarterfinals. In the quarterfinal round, each of Group A’s qualifiers will play two matches against Group C’s qualifiers to decide the two qualifying teams for the semifinals. The same rule is applied for Group B and Group D quarterfinalists.

Group A consists of China (fourth seed), Iran (eighth seed), Fiji and India. Group B features reigning champions Thailand (top seed), Chinese Taipei (seventh seed), Hong Kong (China) and Sri Lanka, while Group D is made up of the Republic of Korea (third seed), Kazakhstan (fifth seed), Australia and the Philippines.

Vietnam will play the opener against Japan on May 20 before taking on Mongolia and Turkmenistan on May 21 and 22 respectively, aiming to join Japan in the quarterfinals.

At the previous competition in Thailand two years ago, Vietnam ended up in sixth place overall after losing 2-3 to Kazakhstan, while Thailand crushed Japan 3-0 to claim their second championship, following the first in 2009.

(Source: nhandan.org.vn)