Teenage home heroes fight on to reach Veracruz Challenge eighthfinals

Mexican teenagers Antonio Lares & Carlos Andres Ayala continued their victorious run at the Veracruz Challenge on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour and, with three wins in a row, have already made it from the qualifications on Wednesday all the way to the eighthfinals on Saturday.

· Watch the Veracruz Challenge on VBTV

Last year, Lares & Carlos Andres reached the semifinals of the FIVB U19 Beach Volleyball World Championships, but they had never managed to make it past the qualifiers of a Beach Pro Tour event until this week. On Friday, the 19-year-old home heroes, seeded 29^th in the 32-team main draw, secured a direct flight to the second knockout round of the tournament with a 2-1 (21-17, 17-21, 15-13) win over the 20^th-seeded pairing of experienced four-time Olympian Adrian Gavira of Spain with Alejandro Huerta to top the final standings in Pool D. Lares raised as many as seven kill blocks and put away two aces towards a team-high 27 points. Caros Andres added another 15 points towards the victory, while Huerta emerged as the best scorer of the match with 34 points to his name.

In Saturday’s eighthfinals, the young Mexicans will take on Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich & Jonathan Jordan, seeded 14th, who finished third in their Pool C and then produced a 2-0 (21-17, 21-12) sweep of their sixteenthfinal game against Italy’s Enrico Rossi & Marco Viscovich.

Huerta & Gavira, on the other hand, bounced back to deliver a 2-0 (21-14, 21-19) shutout of the Austrian pairing of four-time Olympian and 2017 World Championship silver medalist Alexander Horst with Moritz Pristauz in the sixteenthfinals and moved on to another encounter with an Austrian team, Christoph Dressler & Philipp Waller, for a spot in the quarterfinals. 10^th-seeded Dressler & Waller topped Pool G after a 2-0 (21-16, 21-17) sweep of the pool final against seventh-seeded Vicente Droguett & Fernando Quintero of Chile.

In the Pool B final, 18^th-seeded Robert Wyatt Harrison & Cody Caldwell of the United States delivered a 2-1 (12-21, 21-17, 15-13) upset of second-seeded Joao Pedrosa & Hugo Campos to jump into the eighthfinals, where they will meet 19^th-seeded Yves Haussener & Julian Friedli of Switzerland. The Swiss recovered from a 2-0 (21-16, 21-11) loss to third-seeded George Wanderley & Saymon Barbosa of Brazil in the Pool C final with a 2-0 (21-14, 21-18) shutout of Danish qualifiers Mads Mollgaard & Nicolai Houmann in the sixteenthfinals. George & Saymon, on the other hand will face 31^st-seeded Norwegian qualifiers Nils Gunnar Ringoen & Even Stray Aas, who dropped a 2-0 (21-15, 21-19) upset of 12^th-seeded Italians Manuel Alfieri & Alex Ranghieri in the first knockout round.

Another Italian duo, 22^nd-seeded Samuele Cottafava & Gianluca Dal Corso, advanced to the eighthfinals after a hard-fought 2-1 (21-18, 18-21, 19-17) upset of Pedrosa & Campos in a sixteenthfinal match, and will next take on fifth-seeded Ukrainians Sergiy Popov & Eduard Reznik, who achieved out a 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) shutout of Alfieri & Ranghieri in the Pool E final.

In the longest lasting match of the men’s tournament so far, England’s Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello took a 2-1 (28-30, 21-18, 15-10) comeback victory over Droguett & Quitero after 57 minutes of play in the sixteenthfinals and moved on to face top-seeded Miles Evans & Chase Budinger in the eighthfinals. The Americans mastered a 2-0 (21-19, 21-16) sweep of the Pool A final against Rossi & Viscovich.

Ruben Penninga & Matthew Immers of the Netherlands also needed three sets to win their sixteenthfinal match against Israel’s Eylon Elazar & Kevin Cuzmiciov. After celebrating a 2-1 (14-21, 21-17, 15-13) win, the Dutch will take on sixth-seeded Germans Jonas Sagstetter & Benedikt Sagstetter, who beat Chile’s Marco Grimalt & Esteban Grimalt by 2-0 (21-19, 21-13) in the Pool F winners match.

The Grimalts bounced back with a 2-0 (21-15, 21-10) shutout of American qualifiers Lev Priima & Ryan Wilcox to step into an eighthfinal meeting with Canada’s Chaim Schalk & James Shaw, who won Pool H after a 2-0 (21-15, 21-19) sweep of the final against Penninga & Immers.

Saturday’s men’s program in Veracruz will offer the eighthfinals, set to get underway at 09:00 local time (15:00 UTC), and the quarterfinals later in the day.

VW Beach Pro Tour Veracruz Challenge: schedule and results

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