CB Lanzarote Puerto del Carmen hosts Club Balonmano Elche this Saturday at the Tías Municipal Sports Center in a match corresponding to the first leg of the second phase of the XLI Copa de la Reina.
The team from Tías, the only team from the Canary Islands in this phase of the Copa de la Reina along with Rocasa Gran Canaria, has reached this stage after defeating Handbol Sant Quirze (32-24) in the first phase in October on home ground.
CB Lanzarote Puerto del Carmen comes to this match aware of the level of their opponent and the difficulty of the tie being a two-legged affair, but full of hope after defeating the leader of their group in the Women's Silver Division and proud to bring a match of this level to their fans.
Club Balonmano Elche is coming off a home win against Rocasa Gran Canaria (33-29), which has placed them in third place in the Liga Guerreras Iberdrola with only two defeats so far this season. The team from Elche, coached by Joaquín Jaime Rocamora, did not play in the first phase of this Copa de la Reina as they were exempt for being a Liga Guerreras Iberdrola team and has two players among the top twenty scorers in the competition. These are Jennifer Gutiérrez, the league's top scorer so far with eighty-one goals with a remarkable average of 8.1 goals per game, and Ana Isabel Martínez, who has forty-four goals in ten games.
The first leg will be played this Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Tías Municipal Sports Center, while the second leg will be played at the Carrus Municipal Pavilion in Elche, in the province of Alicante. The first leg will be refereed by Jordi Ausas Busquets and Miquel Florenza Virgili from the Catalan Handball Federation.
The coach of the Tías team, Miguel Ángel Lemes, explained that "the Elche match is a reward for the players. They will face one of the best teams in the Spanish league. It is a team full of internationals and we have nothing to lose. We will go out to compete as far as we can knowing that our goal is the league and to be able to play a new promotion phase. The girls will arrive with good morale after the victory of the last match, not only for the result we achieved, but also for the good game played in many phases of the match. We will only have Friday to train so we will not be able to prepare the match well", concluding with a wish for Saturday. It would be nice to see the stands like this Wednesday in the derby and be able to enjoy a good match against a great team from the Division of Honor", concluded the coach from Lanzarote.