08/09/2014 10:00
Swiss girls write history with second consecutive U20 European title
2014 CEV U20 Beach Volleyball European Championship - Women
Cesenatico, Italy, September 8, 2014. On Sunday Switzerland’s Beach Volleyball rising stars Nina Betschart and Nicole Eiholzer wrote a piece of history as they successfully retained their title in the U20 age group, thereby becoming the first pair to win the U20 European crown for two consecutive years.
The two players from Zug routed Austrian twins Nadine and Teresa Strauss 21-16, 21-13 in the final match to repeat their gold-medal performance from last year in Vilnius. Their supremacy there in Cesenatico was absolutely overwhelming as they dropped only two sets throughout the seven matches they contested on the Adriatic Riviera. The final match with the Strauss twins was also one-sided and in the second set Betschart/Eiholzer broke away by recording six consecutive points to move the score from 12:11 to 18:11 and practically seal the deal.
“We are absolutely delighted that we could retain our title and that we could defend the honours of our home country at this level,” Nina Betschart says. “We are simply excited and proud that we could stand the pressure since we went into this tournament being the defending champions,” Nicole Eiholzer adds. “We simply played our own game.”
Their mentor Kurt Brunner is also delighted and draws the attention to the fact that it is not that common for a team to claim back-to-back titles at this level: “Once again they did a superb job throughout the four days of this tournament and did not have any lows. They also did not suffer from any distraction and this is something you can’t afford if you want to claim first place in the end. This is something they have been doing for many years already. However, by retaining the title they had won last year in Vilnius, this time they have done and achieved something really special.”
Nina Betschart does not stop adding medals and honours to her resume: she is a double world champion in the U21 age group – in 2011 with Joana Heidrich and one year later with Anouk Vergé-Dépré; last year she was the first player to win the U20 and U22 European Championship during the same season as she did so in tandem with Nicole Eiholzer and Vergé-Dépré. Nina and Nicole are on a class of their own back home in Switzerland, with seven different age-group titles already on their resume. Their next stop will be the U22 European Championship scheduled for September 18-21 in Fethiye, Turkey where they will try to add yet another accolade to their CV.
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