19/08/2017 23:23
Meius and Tammearu delight Estonian fans with three straight wins at Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup qualifier
2017-2018 CEV Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup
Pärnu, Estonia, August 19, 2017. Pärnu is enjoying the fun of hosting two international Beach Volleyball competitions this weekend. Together with a qualifying event for the 2017-2018 CEV Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup, a men’s-only event on schedule for the 2017 edition of the EEVZA Beach Volleyball Tour is taking place in Estonia’s summer capital.
Although it was extremely windy with occasional rain, the home fans had much to celebrate on Saturday. In the Youth Continental Cup qualifier, it was Rasmus Meius and Märt Tammearu who started the tournament with three straight victories. They first beat Joao Pedrosa and Hugo Campos from Portugal 2-0 (22-20, 21-17). In their second match, Meius and Tammearu defeated Lithuanian duo Ignas Mazuras/Erikas Makaras 21-13, 25-23 and in the third one they rallied to a 21-12, 21-12 victory over Razmik Hakobyan and Arman Miskaryan from Armenia.
“The weather was little a bit bad, but we managed to maintain our level quite well. We outplayed the opponents in serving and also showed a little bit better game towards the end of the sets,” Meius said. On Sunday, the Estonian youngsters will end the main stage of the tournament with a game against France, who today won two matches out of three. “Tomorrow we want to continue in the same way, which means we want to first win against France and then play the final match,” Tammearu commented.
After the first day of competition, Portugal are ranked third with one victory and one loss, whereas Lithuania have won one match out of three and Armenia have lost all of their games so far. The top two spots of the final standing qualify for next year’s Finals. After completion of a round-robin tournament, the best team will directly go to the final whilst the second and third placed teams will play a play-off match, which will determine the second finalist.
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In the girls’ tournament, Estonia’s Jade Šadeiko/Katariina Vengerfeldt started with a 21-12, 21-13 victory over Armenian pair Veronika Koshkaryan/Svetlana Margaryan. After that, they had to accept a 1-2 (11-21, 21-14, 12-15) loss to Portugal’s Matilde Rodrigues/Beatriz Rodrigues and a 0-2 (15-21, 17-21) setback to Lithuania’s Klaudija Kenstaviciute/Rugile Grudzinskaite.
Portugal have won all three of their matches so far, Lithuania have taken two wins, whilst France have one victory from two matches and Armenia have yet to win a game.
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In the EEVZA tournament, it was Kusti Nõlvak and Mart Tiisaar who offered the home fans the biggest emotions. They won all of their three games and progressed straight to Sunday’s quarterfinals. “We are quite satisfied with the way we played today. We have always had problems in windy conditions but today we found a good rhythm and managed to get along in these conditions better than opponents did,” Tiisaar said.
In the quarterfinals, the home stars will play Russia’s Anton Safonov/Anton Saraev. Alongside Tiisaar and Nõlvak, three more pairs finished the main stage of the tournament with a clean sheet. These are Sergiy Popov/Oleksii Denin from Ukraine, Aliaksandr Kavalenka/Aliaksandr Dziadkou from Belarus and Igor Velichko/Maxim Sivolap from Russia.
Their respective opponents will be Latvia’s Mihails Samoilovs/Kristaps Smits, Russia’s Maksim Khudyakov/Ruslan Bykanov and Lithuania’s Lukas Kazdailis/Arnas Rumsevicius.
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