20/08/2017 18:31
Team France triumph in Pärnu’s Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup qualifier
2017-2018 CEV Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup
Pärnu, Estonia, August 20, 2017. Estonia annually celebrate on August 20 the Day of Restoration of their Independence and this time the holiday coincided with an Estonian party in Pärnu where two international Beach Volleyball tournaments took place this weekend. Together with a qualifying event for the 2017-2018 CEV Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup, where France claimed the top honours, a men’s-only event on schedule for the 2017 edition of the EEVZA Beach Volleyball Tour took place in Estonia’s summer capital as well.
In windy conditions, France emerged on top of the men’s and women’s Youth Continental Cup qualifiers. However, it was not all smiles at the beginning for the eventual winners. Both of their teams lost one group stage match and had to play a playoff game to reach the finals.
In the women’s competition, Clémence Vieira and Marie Nevot lost their first match 1-2 (21-18, 15-21, 7-15) to Matilde and Beatriz Rodrigues from Portugal. In the playoff, France beat Lithuania’s Klaudija Kenstaviciute and Rugile Grudzinskaite 2-0 (21-12, 22-20) and then got their revenge over Portugal in the final. After losing the first set 18-21, Vieira/Nevot changed the course of the game and grabbed the latter ones by 21-14 and 15-5. “A positive attitude, our serve and also the ability to not make mistakes,” counted Vieira as the corner pieces of their success. In the final match, the main key was their serve. From the second set both Vieira and Nevot started to hit aces in a row and demolished their opponent’s reception. “We focused a lot on serving in our training sessions as well,” Vieira added.
Although the teams had to cope with quite difficult conditions and especially with a lot of wind, it was not a problem for Vieira and Nevot because in last week’s tournament at home they had to deal with a similar situation as well. “Still at the beginning of the tournament it was difficult but we adjusted and improved with every game,” Vieira commented.
Estonian duo Jade Šadeiko/Katariina Vengerfeldt ended the tournament in fourth place as Armenian pair Veronika Koshkaryan/Svetlana Margaryan were fifth.
Home favourites Märt Tammearu and Rasmus Meius won all of the group matches and qualified directly to the final of the men’s competition. France’s Vivien Tournier and Paul Nicole had lost to Portugal’s Joao Pedrosa/Hugo Campos and ended the first stage of the competition in third place. However, they claimed the playoff match against Portugal 21-14, 21-19 before edging Estonia 2-1 (18-21, 21-15, 15-7) in the final.
“We are very happy. It was very difficult to play with such a strong wind but we gained a very good experience for the future from this tournament in Pärnu,” Nicole said.
Speaking about the final match, both Nicole and Tournier stated that it was their good side-out and block-defence to give them an edge. “In the first set we were close but we made some easy mistakes. But despite losing it, we stayed focused and turned things around,” Tournier said.
Alongside the winners, the runners-up also booked their places in the next stage of the competition. Pärnu’s tournament marked the end of a record-breaking 2017-2018 CEV Youth Beach Volleyball Continental Cup qualification stage, which featured 38 National Federations in the boys’ competition and 41 in the girls’ event. The final stage scheduled for next year will feature the top 16 nations from both genders who will fight for five spots at stake to compete at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.
Lithuanian pair Ignas Mazuras/Erikas Makaras were fourth in the boys’ tournament and Armenian duo Razmik Hakobyan/Arman Miskaryan ended the competition in fifth place. In the victory ceremony, former Estonian Beach Volleyball player Rivo Vesik, who competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, awarded the participants with medals and diplomas.
In the EEVZA zonal event, the home crowd celebrated a second podium finish for Estonia as Kusti Nõlvak and Mart Tiisaar ended the tournament in second place too. In the final match, they lost to Lithuania’s Lukas Kazdailis/Arnas Rumševičius 19-21, 19-21.
The final of the EEVZA tournament was a Baltic derby between home crowd favourites Kusti Nõlvak/Mart Tiisaar and Lithuanian pair Lukas Kazdailis/Arnas Rumševičius. Until then the Estonians were yet to lose a set and had defeated Kazdailis/Rumševičius 21-14, 21-17 in the group stage of the competition.
However, the Lithuanians had the upper hand in the ‘grand finale’ and won both sets by 21-19. “It is very windy here in Pärnu and it works well for us because we have a good serve and this gives us an edge in these conditions,” Kazdailis said. He also compared the final and group stage matches between these two pairs. “In the first match Kusti and Mart served very well and we did nothing,” he added.
Although it was a tough end to the competition for Nõlvak and Tiisaar, the second place coincides with their first ever podium finish in an EEVZA tournament. “We played a very good tournament. It was a real joy to play in front of our fans and we also managed to beat pairs to whom we had previously lost,” Tiisaar said.
Third place belonged to Sergiy Popov and Oleksii Denin from Ukraine. Due to an injury suffered by the Russian team Maksim Khudyakov/Ruslan Bykanov, the bronze medal match did not take place.
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