Pavan and Melissa lead Beach Pro Tour stars at Commonwealth Games

Some of the Beach Pro Tour's biggest stars will be in action in Birmingham, England this week, when the beach volleyball tournament at the 2022 Commonwealth Games gets underway.

The 2022 edition of the Games, which is the second to feature beach volleyball on its programme, is expected to feature over 5,000 athletes from 72 countries, competing in 20 sports.

The beach volleyball tournament will be played from Saturday, July 30 to August 7 and will reunite 12 teams per gender. Matches will be played at Smithfield, a recently-renovated area located in the centre of the city, which used to host Birmingham’s wholesale markets.

Canadians Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes will play to defend the title they won in the first edition of the Commonwealth Games which featured beach volleyball, in 2018, in Gold Coast, Australia. The 2019 world champions are in Pool A, where they will face Kenyan Olympians Gaudencia Makokha and Brackcides Khadambi, Beach Pro Tour regulars Shaunna Polley and Alice Zeimann of New Zealand and Ghana’s Rashaka Katadat and Juliana Aryee.

Australians Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho, who took silver in the 2018 edition, head Pool B. The Tokyo Olympic silver medallists, who recently won a Beach Pro Tour Challenge event in Espinho, Portugal, will have Manolina Konstantinou/Zoi Konstantopoulou of Cyprus, Trinidad and Tobago’s Phylecia Armstrong/Suraya Chase and Sri Lanka’s Deepika Bandara/Chathurika Weerasinghe as their first opponents.

Pool C features England’s Jessica Grimson/Daisy Mumby, Vanuatu’s Miller Pata/Sherysyn Toko, Scotland’s Lynne Beattie/Melissa Coutts and the Solomon Islands’ Rose Gwali/Hannah U’Una.

Commonwealth Games - Women's Match Schedule

Commonwealth Games - Men's Match Schedule

On the men’s side, Australian Chris McHugh will have to defend his 2018 title with a different partner after Damien Schumann retired following last year’s Tokyo Olympics. McHugh and new teammate Paul Burnett, who reached tenth place in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Rankings earlier this week, will take on South African veterans Grant Goldschmidt, a London 2012 Olympian, and Leo Williams, Rwanda’s Venuste Gatsinzi/Olivier Ntagengwa and the Malvides’ Sajid Ismail/Adam Naseem in Pool B.

Canadian Sam Schachter, who took silver in 2018, and new partner Dan Dearing top Pool A, which also features Gambia’s Mbye Jarra/Sainey Jawo, Saint Kitts’ St. Clair Hodge/Shawn Seabrookes and Sri Lanka’s Jayasinghe Rashmika/Sashimal Yapa.

Pool C includes some familiar Beach Pro Tour faces, like the English Bello twins Joaquin and Javier and New Zealanders Bradley Fuller and Sam O’Dea. Also part of the pool are Antonis Liotatis/Charalampos Zorpis of Cyprus and Tuvalu’s Ampex Isaac/Saaga Malosa.

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