NZL Junior Men’s Beach Volleyball Team finishes 9th in FIVB Junior World Championships
-Four New Zealand Junior teams have just returned home from competing in the 2009 FIVB Youth World Beach Volleyball Championships held in Alanya, Turkey from 18-23 August.
Our No. 1 New Zealand Junior Men’s team, Johann Timmer and Ryan Grubb entered the event with a seeding of 11th from the 2008 New Zealand results. With wins against Latvia [14th seed] and Germany [23rd] they went into the third game of their pool against 2nd seeded USA winning comprehensively (21-16, 21-12) to qualify 1st from their pool and advance to the next phase of the championship. Meeting the 19th seeded Australian team took them to a 3 set match, loosing the first but fighting back to Timmer up to block USA with Grubb in support.
take the second set in a close 21-19 battle. Not able to get up again in the 3rd losing 8-15, the pair finished with an excellent 9th= placing.
The No.1 New Zealand Junior Women’s Team Kelsie Wills and Lydia McCormack automatically qualified for the main draw and were off to a convincing start with a 2-0 set win against Turkey [19], but then struggled in the next two games against Spain and Austria ending their championship for 2009.
Team two of the Women’s team Kiri Hirini and Krista Whitewood didn’t fair so well with the single elimination round after beating the Netherlands [2nd] 2-1, but then losing to Czech Republic [7th] 2-0. The second Men’s Team Liam Munday and Paora Morunga were also unsuccessful in progressing past the harsh qualification round where first having a bye went on to lose their only game of the event 2-0 to Latvia.
