Evan Cory & Troy Field made the most of their Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour debut as a team. The Americans topped the podium at the Helsinki Futures on Sunday. Home stars Taru Lahti-Liukkonen & Niina Ahtiainen snatched the women’s gold in the Finnish capital.
25-year-old Cory and 29-year-old Field played together internationally for the first time. Leading the main draw seeding in Helsinki, they claimed five wins in a row to claim the men’s gold. It was Cory’s first Beach Pro Tour podium. His previous best was a fourth place at the first Dubai Challenge last year with Logan Webber. Field had one previous medal on the Tour, a 2022 Maldives Challenge silver with Chase Budinger.
After dropping a couple of sets in pool play and the quarterfinals, Cory & Field were merciless in their final-four matches. They mastered a 2-0 (21-19, 21-16) semifinal victory over Norwegian qualifiers Markus Mol & Jo Gladsoy Sunde, who had won a Futures gold the previous week in Ios. In Sunday’s final, the Americans hammered out an emphatic 2-0 (21-14, 21-12) shutout of third-seeded Austrians Mathias Seiser & Laurenc Grossig.
Seiser & Grossig took the silver and also medalled at their first Beach Pro Tour appearance as a team. It was the first podium on the Tour for 28-year-old Seiser, while 22-year-old Grossig had already picked up a Futures gold in the Hague in late December with Timo Hammarberg as a partner. To reach the Helsinki final, the new Austrian duo had to win the all-Austrian semifinal encounter with Grossig’s previous partner Hammarberg and Tim Berger, seeded eighth in the main draw bracket. They did so in straight sets, 2-0 (23-21, 21-17).
Ninth-seeded Ios champions Mol & Sunde settled for the bronze this time. To earn it, the Norwegians produced a hard-fought 2-1 (21-15, 19-21, 15-12) victory in the third-place match against Hammarberg & Berger. For 21-year-old Mol and 20-year-old Sunde, this bronze represented the third Beach Pro Tour podium, after the gold medals in Ios and in September’s Warsaw Futures.
