Three of the four women’s semifinalists at the Nuvali Challenge on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour are teams that emerged from the qualifications. And while in the case of USA’s Molly Shaw & Toni Rodriguez this is no longer a surprise as it is the third time in three weeks and they were even seeded second once they made the main draw, the other two teams – Poland’s Malgorzata Ciezkowska & Urszula Lunio and Netherlands’ Noa Sonneville & Brecht Piersma – made it this far at such a high level for the first time. Top-seeded Germans Sandra Ittlinger & Kim Van de Velde lived up to their status and also advanced to Sunday’s semifinals. Ciezkowska & Lunio will take on Shaw & Toni at 08:00 local time (00:00 UTC). An hour later, Sonneville & Piersma will challenge Ittlinger & Van de Velde.

• Watch the Nuvali Challenge on VBTV.

Ittlinger & Van de Velde and Shaw & Toni had to play only one match each on Saturday. After skipping the first knockout round as pool winners, they also managed to skip the third round as the two second-round winners with the best records.

The top-seeded Germans claimed a tight 2-0 (21-19, 22-20) victory over fourth-seeded Australians Taliqua Clancy & Georgia Johnson, while another German team, Anna-Lena Grune & Lea Sophie Kunst, fell victim to the American qualifiers in a 2-0 (21-15, 21-14) sweep.

Their semifinal opponents, however, battled their way through all three knockout rounds on Saturday.

20-year-old Ciezkowska & Lunio, seeded 21^st in the main draw bracket, started their day with a 2-1 (16-21, 21-18, 15-9) upset of seventh-seeded Finns Taru Lahti-Liukkonen & Niina Ahtiainen, went on to master a 2-0 (21-14, 21-15) shutout of last week’s Chennai Challenge silver medallists Hailey Harward & Kylie Kuyava-De Berg of the United States, and wrapped up their day with a 2-0 (21-12, 21-19) sweep of their round-of-six encounter with Spain’s Belen Carro & Sofia Gonzalez.

20^th-seeded Sonneville & Piersma, on the other hand, had a rougher passage through both of the first two elimination rounds, when they were pushed to tie-breaker resolutions. In the round of 18, the Dutch came back from a set down to mount an emphatic 2-1 (13-21, 21-17, 15-6) upset of French Olympians Aline Chamereau & Clemence Vieira. Then, they squeezed out a 2-1 (21-17, 19-21, 16-14) victory over Austria’s Katharina Schutzenhofer & Lena Plesiutschnig. Finally, 19-year-old Sonneville and 21-year-old Piersma crowned the day’s effort with a convincing 2-0 (21-14, 21-17) upset of third-seeded Brazilians Andressa Cavalcanti & Taina Bigi.

VW Beach Pro Tour Nuvali Challenge: schedule and results

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