Nigella Negenman & Floor Hogenhout of the Netherlands and Gilles Vandecaveye & Louis Vandecaveye of Belgium celebrated the gold medals at the Leuven Futures on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour. Another Dutch pair – Wies Bekhuis & Brecht Piersma – brought home women’s bronze, while Austrian qualifiers Oleksandra Shkarupa & Magdalena Rabitsch took silver. Czechia’s Krystof Jan Oliva & Vaclav Kurka and Belgium’s Kyan Vercauteren & Joppe Van Langendonck finished first and second runners-up in the men’s tournament.
19-year-old Nigella Negenman and 20-year-old Floor Hogenhout made it two golds and three podiums in a row on the Beach Pro Tour, after winning the Rzeszow Futures and finishing third at the Balikesir Futures over the previous two weeks. The Dutch bracket leaders won all their five matches in Leuven to triumph again. In what was probably their toughest game at the tournament, they came back from a set down to claim a 2-1 (14-21, 21-19, 15-11) semifinal win over sixth-seeded Anniina Parkkinen & Valma Prihti of Finland. In the final, Negenman & Hogenhout produced a 2-0 (21-15, 21-17) victory over Oleksandra Shkarupa & Magdalena Rabitsch.
The Austrian qualifiers, seeded 13th in the 16-team main draw, took silver to make it two podiums out of the team’s two participations in the Beach World Tour. Upon their debut at the Spiez Futures last month, they earned bronze. In fact, for 18-year-old Shkarupa, these are the first two appearances on the Tour. In Leuven, they lost only one other match out of the eight they played, to Netherlands’ Wies Bekhuis & Brecht Piersma in pool, but then got back at them in the semifinals with a 2-1 (11-21, 21-13, 15-12) turnaround.
Fifth-seeded Bekhuis & Piersma bounced back from their first and only loss of the tournament with a 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) sweep of the bronze medal playoff to collect their team’s fifth Beach Pro Tour medal.
