Funchal, Portugal - September 14 - The USA Women's Junior National Team bounced back after a tight quarterfinal loss to Italy with a convincing 16-10 win over China earlier today at the FINA Junior World Championship. The victory puts Team USA into the fifth place game on Sunday where they will meet Spain at 12:20pm et/9:20am pt.
Bayley Weber led the charge on offense scoring a game-high six goals while
Ryann Neushul added five goals.
Georgia Phillips and
Isabel Williams combined for 12 saves in cage. Live streaming of USA-Spain will be available at
FINATV.live (subscription required). For a complete team roster
click here, for more on the event including full results,
click here.
Team USA took control of this match with a seven goal outburst in the first quarter. Neushul scored the first two goals of the match followed by Weber's first and the United States led 3-0 with 5:45 to play in the first. Moments later it was
Jewel Roemer scoring to make it 5-1 in favor of Team USA and then
Abbi Hill finished off the scoring in the period with goal to make it a 7-3 lead going to the second quarter.
The United States offense continued to shine in the second quarter as they added on three more goals in the second quarter to go ahead 10-4 at the intermission. Team USA ripped off three straight goals to open the second, capped by a score from
Noelle Wijnbelt. China had a late goal in the period but Team USA still took a six goal lead into the break.
China scored to open the third to make it 10-5 but the United States answered with three straight goals from Weber, Neushul and Roemer to lead 13-5. China brought it back to 13-6 only to see Weber score again for a 14-6 lead going to the fourth. China's offense had their best showing of the match in the final quarter as they outscored Team USA 4-2. However, those two goals were book sandwiched by scores from Weber as the United States went on to take the match by six goals at 16-10.
Scoring
USA 16 (7, 3, 4, 2) B. Weber 6, R. Neushul 5, J. Roemer 2, R. Wheaton 1, A. Hill 1, N. Wijnbelt 1
CHN 10 (3, 1, 2, 4) Xiao Chen 4, Rui Xu 3, Shiyun Wang 1, Bozhou Lu 1, Wen Su 1,
Saves - USA - G. Phillips 7, I. Williams 5 - CHN - Yuting Xie 5, Wenxin Dong 2
