Two teenagers – 19-year-old Benthe Essink of the Netherlands and Kalle Pieper of Germany – made it among the gold medalists of the last Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour event of the year. Essink won the women’s tournament at the Alanya Futures in Turkiye alongside 23-year-old Lisa Luini, with Japan’s Riko Tsujimura & Mayu Kikuchi and Germany’s Nele Barber & Tabea Schwarz completing the podium. Qualifiers Pieper and his 20-year-old teammate Julian Hikel grabbed the men’s trophy. Turkish home favorites Yusuf Ozdemir & Batuhan Kuru settled for silver, while the bronze went to Hungary’s Artur Hajos & Lukas Niemeier.
Julian Hikel & Kalle Pieper crowned their pair’s Beach Pro Tour debut with gold, the first medal on the Tour for either of them. They started the Alanya Futures from Thursday’s qualifications, and went through the tournament on a 7-1 win-loss record to pick up the trophy. They lost only two sets on the way to the final – in a three-set defeat at the hands of Austria’s Michael Klemen & Elias Holzinger for the first place in Pool D. Seeded 12th in the 16-team main draw, the German duo delivered a 2-0 (21-11, 21-19) shutout of eighth-seeded Hungarians Artur Hajos & Lukas Niemeier in the semifinals and a nail-biting 2-1 (21-18, 19-21, 16-14) upset of Turkish bracket leaders Yusuf Ozdemir & Batuhan Kuru in the gold medal showdown.
The Turkish pair crowned a four-match winning streak with a 2-1 (25-27, 24-22, 15-12) semifinal win over fourth-seeded Klemen & Holzinger to secure their fourth Beach Pro Tour final. After winning gold at the Balikesir Futures last year, they picked up their third silver (second in a row) this year.
Hajos & Niemeier brought home bronze, their first Beach Pro Tour medal as a team. In the third-place match in Alanya, they achieved a 2-0 (21-19, 21-12) victory over Klemen & Holzinger.
