Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, October 9, 2015 — Long matches with plenty of heat and humidity caused event officials to move the women’s round of 16 matches to Saturday morning as the competition nears completion at the double-gender $150,000 FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open, the season opening event on the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. Saturday’s women’s schedule will also include the quarterfinals and semifinals with the bronze and gold medal matches on Sunday.
The double-gender event, the first of three tournaments on the 2015 portion of the 2016 FIVB World Tour schedule, is being held through Sunday at the purpose-built event site on Playa Camarones. Back in Puerto Vallarta for the second straight year, the 2-0 teams Thursday were led by two teams each from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States along with one each from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland and Vanuatu.
PV SKEDThe FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open, which started with qualifying for the final eight spots in 32-team main draws for each gender, Saturday schedule will have the women’s round of 16, quarterfinals and semifinals along with the men’s quarterfinals and semifinals. On Sunday, both the men’s and women’s bronze and gold medal matches will be held at the Playa Camarones stadium court.
ROUND OF 16 MATCHUPS
With four matches at 8:30 a.m. and the other four scheduled for 9:20 a.m., the women’s round of 16 matches will see Germany’s top-seeded Laura Ludwig/Kira Walkenhorst meeting Switzerland’s 21st-seeded qualification team Nicole Eiholzer/Nina Betschart, Switzerland’s third-seeded Isabelle Forrer/Anouk Verge-Depre playing Brazil’s 12th-seeded Eduarda Lisboa/Elize Maia, Italy’s fourth-seeded Marta Menegatti/Viktoria Orsi Toth taking on USA’s 16th-seededSummer Ross/Lane Carico and Argentina’s fifth-seeded Ana Gallay/Georgina Klug going up against USA’s 27th-seeded qualification team Heather McGuire/Amanda Dowdy.
In the other four round of 16 matches Vanauatu’s sixth-seeded Miller Pata/Linline Matauatu playing Canada’s 13th-seeded Melisa Humana-Parades/Taylor Pischke, Germany’s seventh-seeded Julia Sude/Chantal Laboureur challenging France’s 19th-seeded Laura Longuet/Alexandra Jupiter, Austria’s 18th-seeded Barbara Hansel/Stefanie Schwaiger battling Japan’s 23rd-seeded Takemi Nishibori/Sayaka Mizoe, Netherlands’ 24th-seeded Rimke Braakman/Jolien Sinnema going up against their compatriots in Netherlands’ 10th-seeded Sophie van Gestel/Jantine van der Vlist.
The losers in the round of 16 will be eliminated and leave Puerto Vallarta with official ninth-place finishes and purses of $2,000 per team.
ROUND OF 24 RESULTS
With the winners advancing to Saturday’s round of 16 against the eight pool winners, the results saw five seed breakthroughs in the eight matches.
In the round of 24 results, Switzerland’s 21st-seeded Eiholzer/Betschart defeated USA’s 14th-seeded Jennifer Fopma/Brittany Hochevar in three sets, Canada’s 13th-seeded Humana-Parades/Pischke came back to defeat Finland’s ninth-seeded Rikka Lehtonen/Taru Lahti in three, France’s 19th-seeded Longuet/Jupiter upended Brazil’s 15th-seeded Liliane Maestrini/Carolina Horta Maximo and USA’s 16th-seeded Ross/Carico broke through to win in three sets over Germany’s 11th-seeded qualification team Julia Grossner/Victoria Bieneck..
In the second four matches of the round of 24, Brazil’s 12th-seeded Lisboa/Maia won by forfeit over Germany’s second-seeded Katrin Holtwick/Ilka Semmler as Semmler came down with an illness today, USA’s 27th-seeded McGuire/ Dowdy bested Mexico’s 32nd-seeded Claudia Rios/Santoyo Salazar in straight sets, Netherlands’ 10th-seeded van Gestel/van der Vlist eliminated Austria’s 20th-seeded Lena Plesiutschnig/Katharina Schutzenhofer 2-0, and Japan’s 23rd-seeded Nishibori/Mizoe won in two sets over Italy’s 25th-seeded qualification team of Agata Zuccarelli/Laura Giombini.
The losers in the round of 24 were eliminated and leave Puerto Vallarta with official 17th-place finishes and purses of $1,200 per team.
POOL WINNERS
Six of the eight teams who won their respective pools with unscathed 3-0 records Friday morning, earned a bye, moving directly into the second round of single elimination play Friday afternoon. Undefeated pool winners Friday morning were Germany’s top-seeded Ludwig/Walkenhorst, Switzerland’s third-seeded Forrer/Verge-Depre, Italy’s fourth-seeded Menegatti/Orsi Toth, Vanauatu’s sixth-seeded Pata/Matauatu, Germany’s seventh-seeded Sude/Laboureur and Netherlands’ 24th-seeded Braakman/Sinnema.
Winning their respective pools via tiebreaker with 2-1 records were Austria’s 18th-seeded Hansel/Schwaiger and Argentina’s fifth-seeded Gallay/Klug.
TRIPLE TIME
In the Round of 24 matches there were three, three-set matches with the higher seeded winning in each case. Switzerland’s 21st-seeded Eiholzer/Betschart came from behind to beat USA’s 14th-seeded Fopma/Hochevar, 15-21, 21-17 and 16-14 in 50 minutes, Canada’s 13th-seeded Humana-Parades/Pischke came back to defeat Finland’s ninth-seeded Lehtonen/Lahti, 19-21, 21-13 and 15-13 in 49 minutes and USA’s 16th-seeded Ross/Carico broke through to win in three sets over Germany’s 11th-seeded Grossner/Bieneck, 21-19, 19-21 and 15-12 in 57 minutes, the longest match of the round.
QUOTES
After winning their pool play match Friday in three sets over Canada’s Humana-Paredes/Pischke, Italy’s Menegatti/Orsi Toth were elated to win their pool with a 3-0 record to earn the bye into the round of 16 on Saturday.
Menegatti commented, "We won out in our pool, so we're really happy. It was a really tough match against Canada, first of all because of high temperatures. Every match is a tough match but specially this one, playing against such a great team like Canada. I think they are a young team but they came out really strong point after point. It took all we had in us to win this one.”
After their win Friday, Orsi Toth said, "It's our fifth time playing against this team during the season. Until today we have won three matches aand lost one, and today was really important to win. We focused on our inside-out and our aggressive serves. We are doing well but now it really gets tough because its win or go home. We don’t want to leave Puerto Vallarta until Monday."
FIVB PUERTO VALLARTA OPEN PURSE
The gold medal team in each gender at the FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open will split $11,000, the silver $8,000, the bronze $6,000 and fourth place $4,500.
GROWING HISTORY
The FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open is the 330th men’s event since the FIVB began men’s competition in 1987 and the 294th FIVB women’s tournament since they started in 1992.
VIVA MEXICO
Puerto Vallarta is one of three cities to host an international FIVB beach volleyball event. Others have been Acapulco and Rosarito Beach.
Prior to last year’s Puerto Vallarta event, Acapulco had FIVB World Tour events in 1999, 2005 and 2006 and Rosarito Beach hosted a FIVB World Tour stop in 2000. In 2014, Acapulco returned to the FIVB international calendar, hosting the inaugural 17U FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, one of four age-group world championships held every other year by the FIVB.
ON THE HORIZON
After the season-opening event in Puerto Vallarta, the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour, with placement points counting in the FIVB Olympic Rankings for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, continues with the two remaining 2016 FIVB World Tour events on the 2015 portion of the schedule. The first will be the double-gender $150,000 FIVB Antalya Open in Turkey (Oct. 20-25) and the final event in 2015 will be the men’s only $75,000 FIVB Doha Open in Qatar (Nov. 9-13).