Hillstate extend lead at top of V League as Peppers flounder

Elizabeth Ine Barga of Daejeon Korea Ginseng Corporation, right, spikes the ball against the Gwangju Pepper Savings Bank AI Peppers on Sunday at Pepper Stadium in Gwangju. [YONHAP]

The start of the 2022-23 V League season is starting to look a lot like the start of last season with Suwon Hyundai Engineering & Construction Hillstate taking the top spot with four straight wins, while the Gwangju Pepper Savings Bank AI Peppers trail at the bottom of the standings with four straight losses.

Last season, Hillstate finished at the top of the table with 82 points after 28 wins and three losses, while the AI Peppers finished at the bottom with 11 points. After the Korean Volleyball Federation (KOVO) ended the women's V League season prematurely due to the surge of the Covid-19 cases, Hillstate were unable to win the V League title despite dominating for the entire season and being just one win away from taking the trophy.

This season, the Suwon Hyundai Engineering & Construction Hillstate are already looking like the team to beat. Hillstate started out their season strong and are now the only lossless club in the women’s V league. The Suwon team has only conceded two sets in the last four matches, one against the Pepper Savings Bank AI Peppers and another against the Incheon Heungkuk Life Pink Spiders.

Things are more bleak for the Peppers, as their hopes of winning their first match of the season against Daejeon Korea Ginseng Corporation were smashed at home on Sunday.

While it seemed that the Gwangju club would comfortably win their first match after taking the first two sets 25-19, 25-15, the Daejeon club started a big comeback in the third set with a 25-19 win.

After a close contest in the fourth set that ended at 25-23 to level the score to two sets each, KGC finally took the Peppers down in the fifth set 15-13. The best scorer of the match was Elizabeth Ine Barga of KGC, who scored 34 points alone. Eleven of her points were from the last set, won 15-13.

The Peppers are the most recent addition to the seven-club women’s V League and have been struggling against the more seasoned clubs since joining the league last April.

When the Peppers were added to the league last season, it marked the first time in 10 years that a new club joined the V league, after the Industrial Bank of Korea founded the Hwaseong IBK Altos in 2011.

While it was expected that the Peppers would undergo a trial and error period, especially because the team consists of new blood rather than tried and tested players, the Gwangju club would not have expected the period to last for more than a whole season.

This year, as the newest club, the Peppers had the first pick at the rookie draft in September. Their pick was unsurprisingly top prospect Tseveenravdan Orkhon from Mokpo Girls' Commercial High School.

Orkhon was born in Mongolia in 2004 and came to Korea in 2019. In 2021, she was adopted by Korea Ginseng Corporation Yeum Hye-seon's parents, taking the Korean surname Yeum. Orkhon recently gained Korean citizenship after passing the naturalization test in October which enabled her to start playing in the V League. However, after playing in two of Pepper Bank’s matches this season, Orkhon is yet to score a single point.

The Peppers currently sit at the bottom of the standings with four losses. The Industrial Bank of Korea Altos are in sixth with one win and three losses. Korea Ginseng Corporation is fifth with two wins and two losses, Korea Expressway Corporation are fourth, the GS Caltex Seoul Kixx are third, the Pink Spiders are second and Hillstate are in first place with four straight wins.

BY YUN SO-HYANG [yun.sohyang@joongang.co.kr]