Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 20, 2017. The last participants for the main draws of the 2017 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship in Ljubljana, consisting of a Masters for men & a Satellite for women have become known today.  So after 12 closely contested matches at the side courts at Črnuče, the 12 teams to compete on the center court in Kongresi Trg are complete.

Norway's Anders Berntsen Mol and Christian Sandlie Sørum first outplayed Jernej Potočnik and Vid Jakopin (SLO) with a straight 2-0 win. They then didn’t have much trouble with Christiaan Varenhorst/Maarten van Garderen (NED) either beating them to 14 and 13 to secure their spot in the next round and after the game said: “The weather here is pretty hot, we’re not used to this kind of conditions from Norway, so it’s always hard to adapt."

Safa Urlu/Murat Giginoglu (pictured) from Turkey and Maxim Sivolap/Igor Velichko from Russia were next to secure their places through the qualifications, both with a 2-0 victory.  The last match was a closely contested one Germany’s Philipp Arne Bergmann/Yannick Harms eventually beating Lazar Kolaric/Djordje Klasnic from Serbia 2-1 (15-21, 24-22, 15-10)

The schedule for tomorrows Main Draw matches is now on-line and available here.

While in the 2017 CEV Beach Volleyball Satellite Ljubljana the qualification round was more exciting, with all 2nd Round matches going the distance to a third set.

Adriana-Maria Matei/Beata Vaida from Romania (below left), Anika Krebs/Lena Ottens from Germany and Sigrid Simonsson/Tadva Yoken of Sweden (below right) came through victorious and will take to the sand tomorrow, you can find the schedule here.

However as special mention goes to Julie De Beule and Nina Coolman from Belgium who had a straight 2-0 victory over Janne Pedersen/Emilie Olimstad from Norway in the 1st Round, but then had to fight hard in their second match against Serbia’s Milena Matic/Marija Milosevic to gain their first ever qualification to a main draw together: “It feels really great to progress to the main draw, because we don’t play many tournaments. We are just at the beginning of our Beach Volleyball career and we don’t have a lot of points. We have already reached our goal, so tomorrow we’ll just try to play good and get as far as it’s possible”, they said after the match.