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USA women's volleyball team wins first gold medal in a 3-0 game

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  1. Kuromantis
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    From Brazil's side, this felt like an embarrassing defeat. The first set started out with a 4-0 lead, point of which came from Brazil failing to block thrice and the US blocking well once, until...

    TOKYO — Last quadrennial, the U.S. women’s volleyball team incorporated a new practice into their daily routine – a gratitude circle.

    There, each member would go around the room and share what they were grateful for that day. The moment of reflection allowed teammates to show their appreciation, sometimes tearfully, for one another and be vulnerable.

    So, when three-time U.S. volleyball Olympian Jordan Larson delivered the final kill to complete a three-set sweep against Brazil in the gold medal match, the entire U.S. team brought the gratitude circle to the court. They fell to their knees in a huddle, with tears flooding the gold-medal drought that plagued the program since volleyball’s Olympic introduction in 1964.

    This time around, Brazil went undefeated in the pool round and in the bracket leading up to the final. Head coach Karch Kiraly expected the match to be tough against the 2008 and 2012 gold medalists, but the U.S. showed they were tougher.

    “Brazil is a legend in indoor volleyball, both on the women’s side and the men’s side … we lost to them in the final in 2008 in Beijing and in 2012 in London,” Kiraly said. “Both our teams had some disappointments in the last Olympics in Rio. So, it seemed very appropriate that these two legendary programs would meet and very appropriate for our team to finally make history and win its first ever Olympic gold medal here at the birthplace of indoor Olympic volleyball.”

    From Brazil's side, this felt like an embarrassing defeat. The first set started out with a 4-0 lead, point of which came from Brazil failing to block thrice and the US blocking well once, until we were handed the first point from a service fault. The US made mistakes twice and we scored a point which narrowed it from 1-6 to 4-6. After a dig and attack error from the US this went from 4-7 to 6-7, which was undone by 3 consecutive errors from our team. This was the general theme of the rest of the game, where a lot of our points were derived from the US making failures rather than us scoring. I personally am partly inclined to blame it on a girl that got a bad doping exam, but watching the game and our team's interviews it seemed that our team was just pretty tired.

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