News
Top 10 finish for Richmond pairing on national beach tour
30th June 2009
Richmond beach volleyballer pairing G.Duggan and D.Rijvers had a top 10 finish at 2009 Margate Masters National Beach Tour. The Kent tournament was the 1st of 5 locations around England playing host to the Tour over the summer and the only venue in the south east of the country.
The Richmond pairing had to battle their way through 32 teams comprising of 7 pools of 4 to 5 teams. The top team from each pool qualified to the ‘Super 8 Finals’ with the best runner-up. Duggan and Rijvers had a tough 3 match pool playing against English pairing Garcia-Kidd & Dampney – (won 2-1), Polish pairing Blach & Kowalczuk (won 2-0) but were edged out by Italy Grandolfo & Riso in an epic 3rd set battle (13-15, 15-13, 25-23). Richmond pairing finished 2nd and 5 points from clinching a top eight place to the Super 8 Finals.
The combination of youth (G.Duggan 22 years old and 1st time entry on the tour) with experience (D.Rijvers ranked 6th top beach player in Britain between 1991-98) worked well. G.Duggan commented: we will continue to train hard over the summer months however the downside is that there is no beach volleyball facility in South London so we will have to continue
travelling to the South Coast. Tomek Lasocki also a young and up and coming Richmond beach player also competed with his partner and won 1 match and lost 2 finishing in the top 20.
Richmond Volleyball is currently in negotiations with Richmond Council and St Mary’s University to establish a beach volleyball facility
to develop the 2nd most popular team sport (indoor and beach) in the world after football.
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