Canada vs. Swiss for FIVB Swatch Junior Worlds women's crown
What started Saturday with eight remaining women’s teams starting the quarterfinals and semifinals on the sun-drenched sparkling sand of the SEA complex has determined Sunday’s medal match lineups at the 2011 FIVB Beach Volleyball Swatch Junior World Championships for players under the age of 21.
With teams from Canada and Switzerland meeting in the gold medal match and Netherlands and Poland competing for the bronze medal, this year’s 11th annual double-gender event started Wednesday in Halifax, a regional municipality of over 300,000 residents located in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada.
The world championship event is being held through Sunday at the purpose-built beach volleyball complex on the Salter Lot of the Halifax Waterfront alongside the picturesque Halifax Harbor, the second largest natural harbor in the world. This is the first time in the event’s 11-year history that it is being held in North America. The event features live video streaming from the SEA center court at www.sandjamhalifax.ca.
The medal matches for each gender will be played on Sunday on the SEA center court stadium starting at noon with the women’s bronze medal match. Ticket information is available through the event website at www.sandjamhalifax.ca and they are on sale at the gate. Children, five and under, are free. Gathered in Halifax for this year’s event have been 59 teams (28 men and 31 women) from 24 countries.
Meeting for the Halifax women’s gold will be Canada’s top-seeded Victoria Altomare/Melissa Humana-Paredes facing vs. Switzerland’s eighth-seeded Nina Betschart/Joana Heidrich while the Halifax bronze medal match will be between Netherland’s ninth-seeded Rimke Braakman/Sophie van Gestel and Poland’s 13th-seeded Renata Bekier/Daria Paszek.
In Saturday afternoon’s semifinals, under amazingly blue skies reflecting even more of the glorious sunshine that has bathed the SEA complex this week in Halifax, the competition in the SEA center court stadium was as intense as the blazing Canadian sun.
Determining the medal matches for Sunday afternoon, the women’s semifinal matches saw Switzerland’s eighth-seeded Nina Betschart/Joana Heidrich surprised Netherland’s ninth-seeded Rimke Braakman/Sophie van Gestel, 21-19, 21-17 in 38 minutes and Canada’s top-seeded Victoria Altomare/Melissa Humana-Paredes used the energy from the standing-room-only home-country crowd to help overcome Poland’s 13th-seeded Renata Bekier/Daria Paszekin the longest match of the women’s tournament so far-58 minutes, 21-19, 15-21 and 15-12.
