Two American and two Polish pairs advance to U19 World Champs quarterfinals

Two American teams were among the eight who advanced to Saturday’s women’s quarterfinals of the FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championships in Shangluo. They were joined by pairs from Australia, Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland and Thailand into the last eight of the bracket. On the men’s side, two Polish duos made it among the quarterfinalists in China, along with teams from Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Latvia and Mexico.

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In one of the battles for a spot in the women’s semifinals, USA’s Sally Perez & Sarah Wood will take on France’s Saofe Duval & Romane Sobezalz. To reach that quarterfinal, the American duo achieved a 2-0 (21-17, 21-17) sweep of their eighthfinal match against Japan’s Mei Mori & Noa Utsugi on Friday.

“It feels awesome and we’re super excited,” the US players said. “It was a tough battle. We really just stuck together, we communicated a lot on our serve receive and played our game like we know how to. We scouted a little bit before that, so we knew their game plan.”

Duval & Sobezalz were even more emphatic in their eighthfinal against China’s Lei Yijing & Qi Siyu and mastered a 2-0 (21-15, 21-14) shutout to advance.

“At the beginning, it was a little bit hard, but we progressed during the match and played our best at the end,” the French duo commented. “Before this tournament, we've just played two European championships together. During this summer, we even played against each other, but we love playing together. Hopefully, we could make it to the semifinals.”

In an all-Asian quarterfinal on Saturday, Australia’s Jasmine Rayner & Cameron Zajer will take on Thailand’s Varagkhana Sogalee & Somruedee Koedkaew after both teams had to persevere through two rounds of elimination matches on Friday. So did Belgium’s Ines Piret & Annelore Bex and Switzerland’s Muriel Bossart & Livia Stolz, who will meet USA’s Myriah Massey & Lily Davis and Spain’s Sofía Izuzquiza & Marta Carro, respectively, in their quests to reach the semifinals.

In Szymon Pietraszek & Jakub Krzeminski and Marcel Wanat & Tomasz Warych, both of whom emerged from the qualification grind, Poland is the only country with two representatives in the men’s quarterfinals in Shangluo. While Wanat & Warych went through two straight-set victories in Friday’s knockouts – 2-0 (21-15, 21-15) over Switzerland’s Mathis Kalin & Flynn Deecke in the sixteenthfinals, and 2-0 (25-23, 21-17) over Netherlands’ Tom Sonneville & Bram van Der Wel – their compatriots had only one match, but they were pushed to a tie-breaker before celebrating a 2-1 (21-23, 21-7, 15-11) win over Brazil’s Pedro Joaquim Brandao Ribeiro & Gabriel Teixeira Furquim Siqueira.

On Saturday, Pietraszek & Krzeminski will face Finland’s Veeti Viljamaa & Konsta Viljamaa in one of the quarterfinals, while Wanat & Warych will meet Iran’s AmirAli GhalehNovi & Habib AkbarzadehKashani in another. The remaining quarterfinal match-ups will feature Mexico’s Ines Antonio Vargas Lares & Carlos Andres Ayala Herrera against Hungary’s Bence Tari & Akos Veress, and Latvia’s Matīss Salkovskis & Karlis Jaundzeikars against Germany’s Julian Hikel & Ole Sackermann.

FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championships: schedule and results

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