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Taiwanese teams dominate at Asia Pacific Tchoukball Championships
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Singapore, July 12 (CNA) Taiwan won five of the six gold medals that were up for grabs at the Asia Pacific Tchoukball Championships in Singapore from July 9-11, the leader of the squad said Monday.
The wins put Taiwan ahead of Switzerland as the world's top ranked Tchoukball team in terms of accumulated score, according to Huang Chin-cheng, president of the International Tchoukball Federation that is based in southern Taiwan's Kaohsiung County.
Except for the boys' under-12 category in which Taiwan did not compete, it won in all the other groups -- men's, women's, boys' under-18, girls' under-18, and girls' under-12.
Huang said Taiwan gave an outstanding performance at the championships because of the endurance of its athletes, the devotion of its coaches and the fact that tchoukball has been played as sport in the country for 30 years.
Tchoukball is an indoor sport that combines elements of volleyball and squash.
Lu Hsiu-mei, the coach of the women's team, said that the members are mainly students from Taoyuan who usually practice on weekends and go into intensive training during summer and winter breaks.
Because they started playing tchoukball as children, the team members have better skills and more confidence than many of the athletes from other countries, she said.
The girls under-12 team was made up of students from an elementary school in central Taiwan's Changhua County.
Taiwan is the world's top-ranking tchoukball country and hosts the headquarters of the International Tchoukball Federation Huang said, expressing the hope that the government will give more support to the sport.
This year, 30 teams from nine countries, including Singapore,India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Australia, competed in the games.
(Tang Pei-chun and Y.L. Kao) ENDITEM/ pc
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