Monika Paulikienė and Ainė Raupelytė continue to fill the history of Lithuanian volleyball with new records. On Friday, they became the first Lithuanian beach volleyball players to win a ticket to the semifinals of the European Championships.
In the quarter-finals of the tournament, our team defeated experienced Czechs Barbora Hermanova and Marie-Sara Stochlova 41-2 (0:23, 21:21) in 13 minutes.
The match started with changes. After A. Raupelytė's excellent series of serves, Lithuania immediately pulled away 6:1. However, the Czech athletes soon responded with their own successful section and equalized the result. At the end of the set, the Czech volleyball players were one point away from the goal (21:20), but then M. Paulikienė and A. Raupelyte showed their mastery and scored three points in a row.
In the second set, the Lithuanians, who gained momentum, did not leave any hope for their rivals and celebrated a historic victory.
In the semifinals, M. Paulikienė and A. Raupelytė will play against Italians Valentina Gottardi and Marta Menegatti, who have the fourth ranking in the championship. Lithuanians have played with this pair twice - in April 2023, the Italians won 2-1, and in June of this year - 2-0.
Until now, the best result of Lithuanian beach volleyball players in the European Championships was the fifth place last year.
The semifinal will be played at 14.15:19.45 p.m. in The Hague. The match for third place will start at 21:XNUMX and the final at XNUMX:XNUMX.
Lithuanian beach volleyball players Patrikas Stankevičius and Audrius Knašas took ninth place in the men's tournament. This is the highest Lithuanian position in men's competitions throughout history.
In the round of 0, our team lost 2-14 (21:23, 25:XNUMX) to Norwegians Hendrik Moliis and Mathias Berntsen.
The Lithuanians did not find their game in the first set, but in the second they almost created a miracle. Trailing 17:20, the Lithuanians showed a couple of times a self-sacrificing game and managed to score effective points, eventually equalizing the result. However, in the continued set, success followed the Norwegians.
P. Stankevičius and A. Knaš received 460 world ranking points for the ninth place.
The prize pool of the European Beach Volleyball Championship consists of 200 thousand. JAV dollars.
