Twelve teams per gender continue their quests on Thai sand
Thursday’s qualifiers and Friday’s pool stage at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Futures event in Satun are over and the knockout bracket for Saturday’s eighthfinals and quarterfinals is now set to determine the last four per gender, who will engage in the last battles for the podium on Sunday, when all the semifinal and medal match action will be streamed live on the Beach Volleyball World YouTube channel.
12 teams per gender have survived this far in the tournament. Eight of them, the pool runners-up and the third-placed teams, will participate in the first knockout round on Saturday morning. The four pool toppers are awaiting the winners for the quarterfinal matches on Saturday afternoon to set up the semifinal match-ups for Sunday’s climax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVqfOHvybAo
In the women’s main draw, Thailand’s Salinda Mungkhon & Jidapa Bunongkhun, Australia’s Nicole Laird & Brittany Kendall, Vanuatu’s Majabelle Lawac & Sherysyn Toko and Czech qualifiers Valerie Dvornikova & Anna Pospisilova won their pools to advance directly to the quarterfinals.
Ninth-seeded Salinda & Jidapa managed to upset top-seeded Australians Georgia Johnson & Jasmine Fleming in the Pool A final, beating them in straight sets, 2-0 (21-19, 21-19). Before that, the home pair earned a hard-fought 2-0 (23-21, 21-18) shutout of Lithuania’s Ieva Vasiliauskaite & Erika Kliokmanaite, who then produced a 2-0 (21-11, 21-14) sweep of Hong Kong’s To Wing Tung & Wong Man Ching to advance to the next round.
There were no surprises in Pool B, where second-seeded Laird & Kendall claimed two emphatic wins to book a spot in the quarterfinals, 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) over Indonesia’s Dhita Juliana & Desi Ratnasari and 2-0 (21-19, 21-13) over Japan’s Sayaka Yamada & Takemi Nishibori. Dhita & Desi stayed in contention after a 2-0 (21-14, 21-7) victory over Thailand’s Patcharaporn Seehawong & Samitta Simarongnam for the third place in the pool.
Third-seeded Lawac & Toko had a difficult start, losing their first set in Pool C to Indonesian qualifiers Yokebed Eka & Nur Sari, but went on to defeat them by 2-1 (13-21, 21-11, 15-12) and followed up with a 2-0 (23-21, 21-17) shutout of New Zealand’s Katie Sadlier & Olivia MacDonald to top the pool…
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