SUPER SUNDAY TO DELIVER EPIC FINAL DAY OF AUSTRALIAN BEACH VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS

SUPER SUNDAY TO DELIVER EPIC FINAL DAY OF AUSTRALIAN BEACH VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS

Credit: abvt.volleyball.org.au, volleyball australia

Bangkok, Thailand, February 20, 2021 – In one of the most competitive Australian Beach Volleyball Championships at Manly, NSW in recent history, ‘Super Sunday’ will feature Olympians and Tokyo Olympic hopefuls in a battle for the gold medals.

After two days of competition, the top eight teams will firstly meet in Sunday morning’s semi finals, with the winners progressing through to the afternoon gold medal matches live on SBS HD https://www.sbs.com.au/guide/channel/SBSHD and SBS on Demand https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1533776451670

Defending Australian women’s champions Nikki Laird and Becchara Palmer return home to Manly Beach as they prepare to face off against Lucia Michalovicova and Michaela Mokrohajska. The other semi final will see world ranked number three side Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho Del Solar take on Phoebe Bell and Jessyka Ngauamo.

Rio Olympian Laird, is thrilled at the opportunity to play at home on the iconic Manly Beach.

“It’s amazing. It’s a really unique experience playing at home, I think it’s such a beautiful place to play beach volleyball, it’s so familiar, all the conditions feel like second nature.

“It’s critical to have competitions like these, you can spend as many hours on the sand in a training capacity but you’ll never be able to recreate the pressure of a game environment.

“For us knowing that if we want to go to this Olympic Games (Tokyo), we’re going to have to compete under pressure… we need to know how to compete, and we need to know how to win so it’s really important that we continue to take these opportunities and remind ourselves what that feels like.

“Back-to-back (Australian Championships) is the plan. There are definitely some extra teams at the tournament this year that weren’t here last year. Not to undercut our Australian Champs, but it would be even bigger and mean even more this year if we were able to get that title,” she said.

Reigning Commonwealth Games champions Damien Schumann and Chris McHugh will be looking to continue their dominant display, and make it three from three after taking out the first two legs of the tour in Cobram-Barooga and Glenelg.

They’ll face veterans Aaron Crook and Casey Grice in the semi final who will be looking to cause an upset over the heavy favourites.

Tokyo Olympic hopefuls Zachary Schubert and Max Guehrer will head into the semi finals undefeated, but will be challenged by Thomas Hodges and Paul Burnett.

While Guehrer was satisfied with the quarter win, he said they’ll be looking to make some improvements leading into the semi final.

That was a bit of a grind – didn’t really come off exactly as planned. But Zac was with me the whole way through, so we were able to get through some tighter points, get a few breaks, win our defensive points, maintain our lead each time and extend it out to get the set win.

“Now we’ll get in the water, go for a cool down swim, have a good dinner and get a good night’s sleep ready for tomorrow.

“We want to be on the top of the podium, the result in Glenelg has really motivated us to keep working hard. Tomorrow is a whole new day, so we’ll come out and play hard,” said Guehrer.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21 SCHEDULE (all times AEDT)

8:00am: Competition commences
8:00am:
Women Semifinal #1 – (1) Mariafe Artacho Del Solar / Taliqua Clancy v Phoebe Bell / Jessyka Ngauamo (3)
Women Semifinal #2 – (2) Nikki Laird / Becchara Palmer v Mateusz Zieba / Isaac Kapa (6)
9:00am:
Men Semifinal #1 – (1) Damien Schumann / Chris McHugh v Aaron Crook / Casey Grice (8)
Men Semifinal #2 – (2) Max Guehrer / Zachery Schubert v Thomas Hodges / Paul Burnett (3)

Medal Matches
11:30am: Women Bronze Medal – live on SBS on Demand
12:30pm: Men Bronze Medal – live on SBS on Demand
2pm: Women Gold Medal – live on SBS HD or SBS on Demand
3pm: Women Gold Medal – live on SBS HD or SBS on Demand
4pm: Medal presentation

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