Zoe Verge-Depre managed to beat her older sister Anouk in an official international game for the first time in her career as they met face to face in the deciding match for the first place in Pool B of the women’s main draw at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Jurmala Challenge on Friday.

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25-year-old Zoe and her 23-year-old partner Esmee Bobner managed to come back from a set down against 31-year-old Anouk and Joana Mader, Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallists, to claim a hard-fought 2-1 (19-21, 21-19, 15-9) victory. The serve was Esmee & Zoe’s strongest weapon in this game as it brought them 11 direct points, six aces from Zoe and another five from Esmee. The latter also helped bring this all-Swiss battle to victory with five kill blocks towards a match-high 23 points. Zoe finished with 20, two more than her older sister, whose tally includes four aces and three blocks. Mader also signed off with 18 points, including five blocks.

To get to this sister-against-sister face-off, 11^th-seeded Esmee & Zoe produced a 2-0 (21-14, 21-18) shutout of Lithuania’s Monika Paulikiene & Aine Raupelyte, while second-seeded Anouk & Joana outplayed Latvia’s Anete Namike & Varvara Brailko by 2-0 (26-24, 21-14). The Lithuanians also shut out the Latvians for the third place in the pool to secure a spot in Saturday’s knockouts.

Top-seeded home heroines Anastasija Samoilova & Tina Graudina pleased the Latvian fans in Jurmala with two straight-set wins on the way to the top of the final standings in Pool A. First, Tina & Anastasija mastered a 2-0 (21-15, 21-14) shutout of USA’s Brook Bauer & Katie Horton, and then, edged Brazil’s Andressa Cavalcanti & Vitoria Rodrigues to a 2-0 (21-17, 21-16) victory on a 21-point match high by Tina, including four blocks and an ace. In the all-American clash for the third place in the pool, Betsi Flint & Julia Scoles came up with a three-set win over Bauer & Horton.

Third-seeded Melissa Humana-Paredes & Brandie Wilkerson of Canada lived up to the expectations to win Pool C. In the winners’ match, they were quite convincing on the way to a 2-0 (21-14, 21-11) sweep of Italy’s Claudia Scampoli & Margherita Bianchin, garnished with eight aces, but in their opening game, the Canadians had to fight back from a set down against US qualifiers Kelley Kolinske & Hailey Harward on the way to a 2-1 (18-21, 21-13, 15-10) victory, with eight kill blocks from Brandie. Finland’s Taru Lahti-Liukkonen & Niina Ahtiainen also beat the Americans in three sets for the third place to stay in contention.

Fourth-seeded Worapeerachayakorn Kongphopsarutawadee & Taravadee Naraphornrapat of Thailand suffered two tie-breaker upsets in Pool D and were eliminated from the competition. They started off with a 2-1 (21-19, 10-21, 15-13) loss to USA’s Emily Stockman & Megan Kraft in the first round and finished with a 2-1 (21-16, 17-21, 15-11) loss to Poland’s Jagoda Gruszczynska & Aleksandra Wachowicz for the third place. In the pool winners’ match, China’s Dong Jie & Wang Fan, seeded 16^th in the main draw bracket, celebrated a 2-0 (21-18, 22-20) victory over Kraft & Stockman.

Another Chinese pair, fifth-seeded Xue Chen & Xia Xinyi, topped the final standings in Pool E after a 2-0 (21-16, 21-17) shutout of Germany’s Louisa Lippmann & Laura Ludwig and a 2-1 (19-21, 24-22, 15-11) comeback against Brazil’s Carol Horta & Rebecca Cavalcanti. The German stars bounced back with a 2-1 (15-21, 21-18, 15-8) win over Argentina’s Ana Gallay & Fernanda Pereyra in the survival match.

Pool F featured four fierce battles, but none of them resulted in an upset of a higher seed. In the pool final, Brazil’s Taina Bigi & Victoria Lopes, number six in the bracket, recovered from a set down against seventh-seeded Spaniards Daniela Alvarez & Tania Moreno to celebrate a 2-1 (19-21, 21-18, 15-11) victory. Earlier in the day, Taina & Victoria had claimed another three-set comeback victory, 2-1 (20-22, 21-18, 15-13) over Netherlands’ Emi van Driel & Brecht Piersma, while Alvarez & Moreno had taken a 2-1 (21-18, 20-22, 15-12) win over another Brazilian pair, Talita Antunes & Thamela Coradello, who then went on to persevere through two overtime sets against the Dutch to snatch the third place after a nail-biting 2-0 (32-30, 27-25) shutout.

Women’s main draw action will continue on Saturday with the two round-of-18 matches, the eighthfinals and the quarterfinals.

VW Beach Pro Tour Jurmala Challenge: all results and schedule

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