Credit: volleyball.org.au
The coveted Volleyslam festival returns to the Gold Coast this week for 10-days of thrilling beach volleyball action on Coolangatta Beach.
The event will start with the 2023 Australian Beach Volleyball Championships, where national champions will be crowned and the overall Australian Beach Volleyball Tour (ABVT) leaders will be decided during the last event of the 2022/23 summer.
After winning their first ABVT title at the event in Canberra earlier this year, Georgia Johnson (QLD) and Jasmine Fleming (QLD) are teaming up again for the Coolangatta event, coming in as the top seeded female team ahead of Rio 2016 Olympian Nikki Laird (QLD) and Britt Kendall (SA) in second, with Caitlin Bettenay (QLD) and Tara Phillips (SA) seeded third.
Fleming says that winning their first ABVT title in January will give them confidence heading into the Australian Championships this weekend.
“It was really cool for both of us to win our first gold medal on the national tour,” Fleming reflected. “Being able to get that one together after a couple events in Torquay [at the end of 2022] was really great.”
The duo have just returned from New Zealand where they competed in the Mt. Maunganui Beach Pro Tour Futures event, finishing just inside the top 10 in equal 9th place. Fleming said that although they didn’t achieve the final result they had hoped for in New Zealand, it has primed them well for Volleyslam.
“It was my first time traveling to New Zealand and the first beach pro tour event of the 2023/24 international season,” Fleming said. “Although we didn’t get the result we wanted, we learnt a lot and were challenged with some difficult, super windy conditions, so it was fun to problem solve against different team combinations.
“Our focus for the Aus Champs will be to maintain our style of game and to try to implement the things we’ve been working on in training. Hopefully that gets us through to the semifinals and we’ll have a good shot at the medal matches.”
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The men’s seedings have had a bit of a shake-up from the previous ABVT events, with Ben Hood (QLD) and Lucas Josefsen (QLD) coming in as the top team. Wollongong ABVT champions Bryce Poland (QLD) and Christopher Blake (QLD) are seeded second, with Justin Schumann (VIC) and Garang Anyang (VIC) in third.
The Queensland duo of Poland and Blake are a relatively new partnership, but…
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