Elite16 - Paris, FRA - 2023

Carol & Barbara win all-Brazilian clash in Paris

Duda & Ana Patricia and Kloth & Nuss advance to knockout stage

Published 06:46, 28 Sept 2023

In one of the most anticipated matches of the first competition day in the women’s main draw of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16, sixth-seeded Barbara Seixas & Carol Solberg mastered a sweep of their encounter with fellow Brazilians Agatha Bednarczuk & Rebecca Cavalcanti.

Watch the Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16 main draw live on VBTV.

In the first set of this first-leg Pool C match, Agatha & Rebecca failed to hold on to a 3-0 lead and lost by the narrowest of margins. In the second, the world’s number four team also had to wipe out an early two-point deficit in the score, but once they took control, they prevailed on the way to closing the match in straight sets. Carol was the best scorer of the match with 18 points, including four aces and three kill blocks.

In the other Pool C match on Thursday, 11^th-seeded Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands produced a convincing upset of third-seeded Canadians Melissa Humana-Paredes & Brandie Wilkerson, with 17 points from each of the two members of the winning team.

In Pool D, fourth-seeded Cinja Tillmann & Svenja Muller of Germany mastered a shutout of host country representatives Lezana Placette & Alexia Richard, while fifth-seeded Americans Sara Hughes & Kelly Cheng were awarded a forfeit win over Germany’s Louisa Lippmann & Laura Ludwig.

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Two teams from Pools A and B have already secured their advancement beyond pool play by claiming two wins each on Thursday.

The other Brazilian team in the main draw, Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) & Ana Patricia Ramos, reigning world champions, World Ranking leaders and number one seeds in the tournament, survived a difficult start in Pool A to claim a narrow victory over Betsi Flint & Julia Scoles of the United States. Ana Patricia raised three kill blocks towards a 25-point tally, but it was Scoles who came up with the match high of 26. Ana Patricia & Duda went on to master a shutout of European champions Nina Brunner & Tanja Huberli of Switzerland. Both the Swiss and the Americans won their games against Finnish qualifiers Taru Lahti-Liukkonen & Niina Ahtiainen by and by , respectively. In their match, Scoles exploded with eight kill blocks towards an impressive match high of 37 points.

Second-seeded Americans Taryn Kloth & Kristen Nuss were quite emphatic in Pool B. They started off with a sweep of their opening game against Italy’s Marta Menegatti & Valentina Gottardi, with eight kill blocks from Kloth, and followed up with a shutout of Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallists Taliqua Clancy & Mariafe Artacho Del Solar of Australia. Meanwhile, the other American team in the pool, qualifiers Terese Cannon & Megan Kraft, lost both their matches to the same opponents after pushing them to tie-breaker resolutions. Mariafe & Clancy defeated them by and Menegatti & Gottardi by .