15th placed Bielsko-Biala scored an important 5-set win against 11th placed Espadon this weekend. With the win, the team rose to 16 points in PlusLiga’s standings, and with 5 matches left in the competition, it may just have what it takes to escape relegation. The victory also had an important meaning for the players, as the team’s head coach, Paweł Gradowski, has been recently hospitalized. Here is what team player Bartosz Janeczek said after the match:
We came through, we played for our coach. It is important to state this, we have frequently held meetings among us and we all believe that it is not yet the end of men’s volleyball in Bielsko-Biała. I think we have a fairly even team, where each of us can contribute something different, especially when things go sour. Everyone can enter, calm down the game. This may indeed have been the match of the season, but I think that we also had very important meetings earlier. There were matches in which we had our chances, and we could not use them. We were up 2: 0 in Bydgoszcz and in Katowice and were not able to close the deal.”
Bielsko’s next match-ups can be divided into two groups. It won’t have much of a chance against Zaksa, Skra, and Gdansk, which currently rank 1st, 2nd, and 4th, respectively. The decisive games will be against Zawiercie and Kilce, which rank 13th and 16th. If Bielsko manages to beat the lower tier teams, 2 out 5 matches, its chance to stay in PlusLiga improves by a lot, but of course, it will also have to wait on other results.
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