U.S. Women's Beach Team Advances to First Round

B.J. Hoeptner Evans
Manager, Media Relations and Publications
Phone: (719) 228-6800
E-Mail: bj.evans@usav.org

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Sept. 18, 2009) – The U.S. women’s beach volleyball team of  Jazmin Machado (Encinitas, Calif.) and Summer Ross (Carlsbad, Calif.) has advanced to the first round of the FIVB Junior (U-21) World Championship in Blackpool, England.

Machado and Ross advanced by going 1-1 in pool play on Friday after winning their first pool play match on Thursday.

Sixteen teams advanced to the first round, including two teams each from Brazil, Germany and Netherlands. Joining them will be tandems from Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, Switzerland as well as the United States.

Machado and Ross, who are seeded eighth in the event, opened play on Friday be defeating Finland’s Eveliina Koljonen and Taija Pekkarinen, seeded 20th, 21-9, 21-11 in 28 minutes.

They lost their final pool play match to the Czech Republic’s fifth-ranked Martina Bonnerova and Barbora Hermannova in a 45-minute battle, 21-12, 18-21, 16-18.

Machado and Ross will play Canada’s 13th-seeded Kaitlyn Krizmanich and Caleigh Whitaker in Saturday’s first round. The second round will also be played on Saturday with the semifinals and medal matches being played on Sunday.

The U.S. men’s beach team of Chase Ross (Carlsbad, Calif.) and Steven “Stevo” VanderWerp (Grand Haven, Mich.) lost its final pool play match on Friday, falling to fourth-seeded Alexey Pastukhov and Sergey Kostyukhin of Russia, 15-21, 16-21 in 33 minutes.

More information and complete results and photos are available at www.fivb.org/EN/BeachVolleyball/index.asp.

Tags: Beach, Beach Volleyball, FIVB World Championship, junior