Beach volleyball attracts many

A RECORD entry of 26 teams took part in the first DTS-Maerua Superspar Beach Volleyball Tournament of the year held at the DTS Beach Volleyball Courts in Windhoek.

The series consists of seven tournaments and includes four categories.
These are the four-a-side social mixed, two-a-side men, ladies’ and youth categories.
The newly formed four-a-side category is part of a strategy to attract competitive beginner teams to play in a challenging tournament and eventually to incorporate the best of the four-a-side players into the two-a-side competition.
On Saturday, eight teams battled it out, with most of them already having a few years of volleyball experience.
In the final the Jumpin’ Potatoes team met the Goudvissies, with Jumpin’ Potatoes winning the first set easily, but Goudvissies coming back in the second set and managing a draw.
The third tie-break set had to decide and The Jumpin’ Potatoes narrowly winning by 15-12. The third place went to The Uncardables.
In the youth division, five teams entered with fistball pros Viggo von Scheliah and Helmo Minz once again proving that they are the team to beat in that category by winning all their matches.
Second place was secured by Wolfgang Erb and Thorsten Schmidt-Dumont, followed by Moritz Beth and Michael Falk in third place.
In a very tough men’s division, Mwita Sikopo and his partner Rector Mbeha showed that fitness and skill get you to the top.
Only Joel Matheus and Heiko Diehl managed to win one set against Sikopo and Mbeha, finishing in second place. Third place went to Deon Cloete and Walter Farmer.
Eight women for the two-a-side teams played until just after sunset in an interesting competition involving a number of newly formed teams.
The number one seed team of Anita Kinder and Karin Curschmann easily managed to reach the semi-finals where they played against third seeds Katja Biesemann and Nicole Giberson.
Kinder and Curschmann won 2-0 and qualified for the finals where they faced number four seeds Simone von Wietersheim and Sabine Pampe, who beat the second-seeded team of Selma Nahambo and Theopolina Shikulu with 2-1 (21-16, 19-21, 15-10) in the other semi-final.
Von Wietersheim and Pampe managed to win the first set 21-16, while Kinder and Curschmann won the second set 21-15 and the 3rd set had to decide who will be the first winner of this year’s competition.
The younger team of Von Wietersheim and Pampe lost 10-15 to the more experienced Kinder and Curschmann, who clinched victory of the ladies’ category. The third place went to Nahambo and Shikulu.
The next tournament will be held on April 18 at DTS.