HAMBURG, Germany – Brook Bauer and Maddie Anderson were warned about the perils of passing at Rothenbaum Arena, home of the eighth annual Hamburg Elite. Something about the air in the arena. Makes the ball dance and dive and do the strangest things. Can’t read it, just have to grind it out.
A year ago, the women’s field piled up 350 aces, shattering the previous record for most in a tournament.
Just keep the ball off the floor.
They nodded. They could do that.
They didn’t do that.
They promptly went down, 2-8.
It was their first match of the tournament, a single-elimination qualifying match against Japan’s Reika Murakami and Asami Shiba. Little real estate to settle into the cavernous, 13,200-seat arena and its deleterious effects on float serves.
Yet settle in they did. Bauer and Anderson lost that first set, 17-21, but after that 2-8 start, they were in full control, and it would stay that way. The former Florida State stars battled back from the sluggish start to win, 17-21, 21-16, 15-13, negating six aces with eight of their own to qualify for their first Elite main draw since Quintana Roo, Mexico, in March. It ends a three-tournament skid in which they fell in the qualifiers of Elites.
It was the first in a day of good news for USA Volleyball. While most American teams are in Chicago for this weekend’s AVP League Championships, Bauer and Anderson were the opening domino in a successful day. Hailey Harward and Molly Phillips followed up their victory with one of their own, a decisive sweep over Lisa Luini and Desy Poiesz of the Netherlands, 21-15, 21-17.
Kylie DeBerg and Xolani Hodel put the finishing touches on a perfect day for USA Volleyball, coming back to beat Germans Hannah-Marie Scheider and Tabea Schwarz to make their first Elite main draw in their second time trying.
Other pairs to qualify for the Hamburg Elite on the women’s side include Raisa Schoon and Mila Konink, Heleene Hollas and Liisa Remmelg of Estonia, Lezana Placette and Alexia Richard of France, Daria Romaniuk and Yeva Serdiuk of Ukraine, and Martina Maixnerova and Kylie Neuschaeferova of the Czech Republic.
Ruben Penninga, Matthew Immers Make Crucial Main in Hamburg Elite
Of all the massive upsets on the men’s side, the most critical was perhaps, ironically, the most boring: Matthew Immers and Ruben Penninga of the Netherlands prevailing over No. 15 seed Leon Luini and Yannick Verberne, 21-13, 21-15.
Why, and how, is a 2 beating a 15 so vital?
In a word, World Champs.
Immers and Penninga sit at No. 35 on the World Championships rankings, on the outside looking in. A big finish here could vault them into a better position on the qualifying bubble, and also pad their entry points, no small thing given the fact that there are just two World Championship qualifying events remaining after Hamburg, the Joao Pessoa and Rio Elites in September.
Their work is far from over, of course, as they will need to break pool. But a qualifier win is a win, indeed.
A massive one of those was had by the new Austrian pairing of Alex Horst and Moritz Pristauz. After beginning the year with different partners, neither finding much success, the two split and joined forces for the first time in Hamburg. The result? They became the third 16 seed to beat the 1 in an Elite qualifier, knocking off home Germans Lukas Pfretzschner and Sven Winter, 14-21, 21-16, 15-10. Funny enough, Pristauz was part of another 16 beating a 1, doing so in Ostrava when he and Julian Horl upset Sweden’s Jacob Holting-Nilsson and Elmer Andersson, who have since become the hottest team on the Beach Pro Tour.
Staying hot were Marco and Esteban Grimalt of Chile, beating Andre and Guto, 17-21, 26-24, 15-10 to follow up on their ninth-place finish out of the qualifier in Montreal. Filling out the qualifier winners for the men were Portugal’s Joao Pedrosa and Hugo Campos, Germany’s Sagstetter brothers, Jonas and Benedikt, the Czech Republic’s Jiri Sedlak and Jakub Sepka, Germany’s Philipp Huster and Max Just, France’s Remi Bassereau and Calvin Aye, and Austria’s Chris Dressler and Philipp Waller.
