After Dutch pivot Nikita Van der Vliet scored 12 for her side as they ended their Poland 2018 campaign with a 33:26 victory over Spain to finish seventh overall, her total haul in Kielce came to 64 goals.

This was to eventually prove enough to top the goalscoring charts, with a total shot success rate of 74% from 86 attempts in nine games, finishing above Tunisia’s Fadwa Aouij (59 goals from seven games) and Bitna Woo (57 from nine).

“I can’t score goals without my team,” said Van der Vliet to IHF.info. “I need the whole team to score and we did it together.

“It means a lot; it’s not only for me, it’s for the whole team and I’m very proud of myself that I scored so many goals, but I am very proud of my team, without them I cannot score so many.”

With the win, the Netherlands picked up their third best result in the women’s youth world championship after finishing third (2010) and sixth (2014) previously and can take a victory back home from their final game.

“It was a good game and we fought a lot as a whole team,” said Van Der Vliet. “We went into this match with all our energy, we won and are very happy. After we lost the Sweden quarter-final we were disappointed with ourselves, but we talked a lot with each other on the rest day and the next day we had a good fight with Denmark but lost on penalties.

“But we did get to the last eight which was our goal and we are happy although we didn’t get any medals.”

Now the tournament is over for the Dutch, what has she and her team learnt from it and what will Van der Vliet do now?

“Before the tournament we were not like all the time a team,” said the 18-year-old OTTO Work Force / VOC Amsterdam player. “But in this tournament, we grew up together as a team and that’s good from us. During this time, we have had a lot of conversations with each other and learnt a lot from each other - now we are a very good team and I am very proud.

“I will go home now and have week’s rest,” she continued. “My next game is in the Super Cup in Holland. so, I will train two days this week and then have a week’s rest and then we start preparing for the Women’s EHF Cup.”