Beach Volleyball World Championships Adelaide 2025

Dani & Tania win first women’s three-setter in Australia

Court two in Adelaide – the place to be on opening day

Published 11:17, 14 Nov 2025

Spain’s Tania Moreno in action at Adelaide 2025

The first three-set match of the women’s FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship unfolded on Friday afternoon in a Pool G fixture on court 2. In a duel between two Paris 2024 Olympian teams, Spain’s Daniela Alvarez & Tania Moreno came back from a set down against Lithuania’s Monika Paulikiene & Aine Raupelyte to celebrate a 2-1 (12-21, 21-19, 15-12) victory. The same court staged all women’s tie-breaker matches that followed on opening day in Adelaide.

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Tania led the way to success with an impressive 28 points for the winners, while Dani scored all of the duo’s two aces and two kill blocks to finish with 10 points. Raupelyte powered the Lithuanian side with seven kill blocks and three aces towards a team-high 25 points, while Paulikiene put away another 19, including two aces.

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On Saturday, Dani & Tania will take on Australia’s Jasmine Fleming & Stefanie Fejes, while Paulikiene & Raupelyte will challenge the American pairing of Molly Shaw and defending world champion Kelly Cheng, who shut out the Aussies earlier on Friday.

Right after the battle between the Spaniards and the Lithuanians, court 2 offered another tie-breaker match, in which Ukraine’s Valentyna Davidova & Anhelina Khmil mounted a 2-1 (18-21, 21-14, 15-8) comeback win over Mila Konink & Desy Poiesz of the Netherlands. In the other Pool B opener, second-seeded Brazilian heavyweights Carol Solberg & Rebecca Cavalcanti cruised to a 2-0 (21-7, 21-8) sweep of their game against Egypt’s Marwa Abdelhady & Nada Hamdy to take the lead in the pool standings.

Court 2 continued to be the place where the toughest women’s duels were happening on Friday. In a Pool L encounter, Germany’s Melanie Paul & Lea Kunst also turned the course of their match against Switzerland’s Annique Niederhauser & Leona Kernen to claim a 2-1 (11-21, 21-18, 15-11) win. Home favorites Taliqua Clancy & Jana Milutinovic failed to delight the spectators with the first Australian women’s win at the World Championship and suffered a 2-0 (21-15, 21-11) shutout at the hands of 37^th-seeded Yan Xu & Xia Xinyi of China.

One of only two sets pushed to overtime in the women’s tournament on Friday also occurred on court two. In a Pool D fixture, Sandra Ittlinger & Anna-Lena Grune and French Olympians Lezana Placette & Alexia Richard engaged in a tight battle, which the Germans managed to win in straight sets, but by the narrowest of margins, 2-0 (21-19, 22-20). In the shortest match of the day, fourth-seeded Americans Terese Cannon & Megan Kraft took only 21 minutes to master a 2-0 (21-6, 21-9) blowout in their World Championship opener against Mozambique’s Vanessa Muianga & Mercia Mucheza and took the lead in Pool D.

Czechia’s Marketa Svozilova & Marie-Sara Stochlova took the lead in the Pool F standings with an emphatic 2-0 (21-15, 21-15) sweep of their opening game against Poland’s Natalia Okla & Urszula Lunio. In the other first-leg game in that pool earlier on Friday, reigning Olympic champions Ana Patricia Ramos & Eduarda Lisboa (Duda) shut out Australia’s Tara Phillips & Kayla Mears.

Pool C also offered a couple of straight-setters on opening day in Adelaide. Third-seeded Kristen Nuss & Taryn Brasher of the United States defeated Czechia’s Kylie Neuschaeferova & Martina Maixnerova by 2-0 (21-13, 21-18), and Brazil’s Vitoria Rodrigues & Hegeile Almeida beat Netherlands’ Emi van Driel & Wies Bekhuis by 2-0 (21-19, 21-16).