SA, Mauritius win beach volleyball tourney

THE South African men’s team and the Mauritius women’s team were the winners of the sub-zonal beach volleyball tournament that took place over the weekend at the DTS sports club in Windhoek.

The tournament was a ranking competition for the start of the London 2012 Olympics qualifiers.In the women’s competition, South Africa was second with Namibia third. Namibia was second with Zambia third in the men’s section.The South African men’s team beat both Namibia and Zambia 4-0 after they won all their matches without dropping a set.In their first match, Namibia B (Heiko Diehl and Peter Brinkman) lost 21:14, 21:12 against the South African B side of Leo Williams and Jerome Fredricks. They also fell to the South African A (Freedom Chiya and Grant Goldschmidt).The Namibian A side of Rector Mbeha and Mwita Sikopo did not fare better, as they went down 21:17, 21:19 to the South African B side and then went on to lose 21:9, 21:10 to the South African A team.The women from Mauritius emerged as the winners after they beat South Africa 3-1 and Namibia 4-0.In their last match of the event, Namibia B played Mauritius B in what could easily be the match of the tournament.After losing the first set 21:12, the Namibian pair of Julia Laggner and Corina Wahl came back in the second set to win it 15:21. They led for most of the third set but ended up losing the set 15:12 and the match as a result of some mistakes.The Namibia A team of Lizette Röttcher and Simone von Wietersheim also only won one set during the two-day tournament. That was against the South African A side. 8:21, 21:19, 12:15.The Mauritian B team of Prisca Seerungen and Marjorie Nadal lost only one match (2-0) against the South African B team of Palesa Sethonyana and Randy Williams. They managed to beat the South African A team (Amelia Luyt and Natasha Strydom) 2-0.The A team of Mauritius (Elodie Li yuk lo and Natacha Rigobert) had a clean sweep as they won all their matches without dropping a single set.The captain of the Mauritian team, Rigobert, was very excited after they were announced as the winners of the women’s section of the competition.Mauritius currently play in the world tour and are based in France were they train with a club in Cannes.’The level we normally play on the World Tour cannot compare with the level here,’ said Rigobert’It is like two separate worlds. The level in Europe is obviously much higher but I think it is because in Africa did not really concentrate so much on the beach volleyball like they do on the indoor volleyball.’The next round of the qualifiers will be in August when the zonal competition will be held at a yet to be decided venue.The successful teams from the zonal phase will participate at the Continental Cup next year where the two winners of the men and women’s sections will represent the continents at the London 2012 Olympics. – namibiasport.com.na