Host nation Australia picked up both gold medals at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Coolangatta Futures on Sunday. Jack Pearse & D'Artagnan Potts topped the men’s podium, while Stefanie Fejes & Jasmine Rayner triumphed in the women’s competition. Another Aussie team – Solomon Bushby & Justin Schumann – claimed the men’s bronze, while Thailand’s Pithak Tipjan & Wachirawit Muadpha brought home silver. Romania’s Beata Vaida & Francesca Alupei and USA’s Kaeli Crews & Erica Brok completed the women’s podium.
Second-seeded Jack Pearse & D'Artagnan Potts not only earned their first Beach Pro Tour hardware as a pair, but also made it gold in an emphatic manner, winning all five of their matches in front of the home crowd in Coolangatta and dropping only a set along the way. In Sunday’s semifinals, they achieved a 2-0 (21-15, 21-19) shutout of fourth-seeded compatriots Joshua Howat & Luke Ryan, and followed up with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-17) sweep of the gold medal match against seventh-seeded Pithak Tipjan & Wachirawit Muadpha.
The Thai players decorated their pair’s Beach Pro Tour debut with silver, on a 4-2 win-loss record with both defeats at the hands of Pearse & Potts. Pithak & Wachirawit reached the final after a 2-1 (18-21, 21-16, 15-12) semifinal comeback against fifth-seeded Solomon Bushby & Justin Schumann, who bounced back with a 2-1 (17-21, 26-24, 15-9) comeback in the all-Australian third-place playoff against Howat & Ryan to win bronze, their second medal in two Beach Pro Tour appearances, after last month’s gold at the Mount Maunganui Futures.
