Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 20, 2018. In a high-level, very entertaining match Swiss Nina Betschart and Tanja Hüberli (5) said goodbye to Utrecht with a ticket to the #EuroBeachVolley semifinals in The Hague in their pockets. Germany’s fourth seeds Victoria Bieneck and Isabel Schneider (4) won the first set, but were then powerless to the Swiss force. In the men’s tournament Poland and Latvia had an easy qualification to the Round of 16 to be played on Saturday.

In their life off the court the teams of Betschart/Hüberli and Bieneck/Schneider are good friends. They train together regularly and thus know all of each other’s secrets. Despite having no Dutch teams left in Utrecht, the stadium was still packed with over 2,000 spectators. They were in for a real treat.

The opening set went side-out to side-out, both teams not giving anything away. In the end the Germans had just the better answer when faced with the Swiss blocking game. They won the opening set 21-18.

In the interval between sets 1 and 2 the talk on the Swiss bench had a lot of impact: “We both knew it wasn’t our best. I didn’t find the gap in the block, in the second set I could read her game better,” explained Hüberli. “We have learnt from yesterday’s match. We realised the service pressure was key for us, so we knew today it might be the same,” Nina Betschart added.

Essential talk between Nina Betschart (left) and Tanja Hüberli (SUI)

And from then on it was a whole different match. With a lot more blocks and some direct points from serve, the second set was quickly over, 21-11. The third set showed the same picture, which resulted in a 15-12 victory for the Swiss.

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The Polish duo Grzegorz Fijalek and Michal Bryl made the best of the new surroundings, coming over from The Hague. Their Turkish opponents Murat Giginoglu and Volkan Gögtepe also came from the seaside resort to the city centre with the the Dom tower and the Neude stadium.

Within minutes, the Polish team had a comfortable lead, 10-4. The Turkish tandem was unable to prevent the number 10 seeds from scoring. It did not take long before the first set was in the bag with 21-12.

Early in the second set Murat Giginoglu had the medical team come on court for treatment to his back. In the remainder of the match moving seemed to be limited for the Turkish blocker. Fijalek and Bryl took advantage and secured another 21-12 win to make sure they could play in tomorrow’s Round of 16 against Spain’s Pablo Herrera and Adrián Gavira.

Latvians Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs came to Utrecht to make amends for a previous setback. In the last pool match they led 12-6 to Russian couple Oleg Stoyanovskiy/Igor Velichko, but eventually suffered a 15-17 defeat. So in this match in the Round of 24, being faced with yet another Russian team, they had their eyes on the prize. Maxim Sivolap and Artem Yarzutkin were trailing from the get go. The difference in quality was evident.

The Russians had real difficulty getting the ball to hit the sand, and when they did it was often outside of the 8 by 8 court side. As a result, Plavins and Tocs created a gap early on in both sets, which they kept till the end. The result was a comprehensive 21-14, 21-14 win. In tomorrow’s Round of 16 match they will play Swiss Nico Beeler and Marco Krattiger, who had a rest day after topping their pool on Thursday.