Former Los Al Griffins Justine Wong-Orantes and Rachel Fattal continue to play big roles in the success of the US women’s national volleyball and water polo teams.
Fattal (LAHS ’12) scored the game-winning goal as the US women’s water polo team claimed their fourth consecutive World Cup title with a 12-11 win over the Netherlands. The match seemed much easier as the US built up a 8-3 lead before the Netherlands stormed back and tied the match with just under two minutes remaining. After a US timeout Fattal put away the game-winner.
US Women’s Volleyball team captain and libero Justine Wong-Orantes helped the US go 3-1 in the second series of the Volleyball Nations League (VNL) preliminary rounds, and thus earn the second seed at the VNL Final Round on July 12-16 at College Park Center in Arlington, Texas,
Volleyball Nations League is the world’s premier annual international indoor volleyball tournament. The top 16 teams in the world play four matches a week for three weeks of preliminary competition. The top eight teams at the end of the preliminaries will go to the Final Round
The second batch of games took place in Suwon, South Korea, beginning June 27. The US women, the defending world champions, opened with a 3-2 win over Poland (17-25, 25-15, 27-25, 28-30, 16-14). Wong-Orantes (a LAHS ’14 grad from Cypress) had 23 digs in that match. The Americans followed that up with wins over Bulgaria and Germany before falling to China in five sets (18-25, 25-19, 19-25, 25-20, 15-8)on July 1. Wong-Orantes paced the U.S. defense with 16 digs,
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