The future of beach volleyball was on display last week at the U19 World Championships in Phuket and it looked very good. Megan Kraft and Delaynie Maple showed how NCAA competition can elevate a young team’s game and the 17-year-old French boys, Arthur Canet and Teo Rotar, took gold on the men’s side.
Kraft and Maple are on top of the world
Anyone who follows NCAA beach volleyball knows what a juggernaut the USC program is. They manage to recruit many of the best players in the country (actually the world) and then develop them to an elite level. Last year at this time, Megan Kraft and Delaynie Maple had yet to play their first college match. But what a year it has been. First they became national champions with USC and now they have become World Champions at the U19 level. It was the first U19 World Championship for the USA since 2010 and first medal since 2017.
*Correction – In the original version I said the USA hadn’t won a youth world championship since 2010, but the USA won a gold medal in the U17 World Championships in 2014. Thank you to Beach Volley Blog reader Maris for alerting me.
Megan and Delaynie had to start all the way back in the qualifier before ascending to the top of the podium. There was plenty of class in this field, featuring multiple European age group champions and age group world champions. In a few years, the teams Kraft and Maple outdueled will be on the short list to win big tournaments at the senior level, but this week belonged to the Americans.
Megan and Delaynie beat Russians Olga Gavrilova and Alina Salmanova in the gold medal match in convincing fashion 21-12, 21-17. That came after a semifinal win over fellow Americans and Stanford University players Xolani Hodel & Kate Reilly who thrived in their first international experience.
Olga and Alina vanquish rivals on the way to silver
Olga and Alina probably had the tougher path to the gold medal match. They also had to play the qualifier tournament just to get in. In the quarterfinals they beat a legend in the making from their country, Mariia Bocharova. The 19-year-old already boasts 12 international tournament victories. This time she and her partner Elizaveta Gubina lost an agonizingly close match 20-22, 19-21 and were eliminate early. They play again this week in the U21 competition and don’t be surprised to see them bounce back strong.
In the semifinals Gavrilova & Salmanova took on Ukraine’s European age group champions, Anhelina Khmil & Tetiana Lazarenko. Olga and Alina showed their determination again by surviving a marathon second set to win 21-13, 25-23.
The bronze medal was won by Anhelina Khmil & Tetiana Lazarenko. They held on to beat Xolani Hodel & Kate Reilly 21-15, 21-19.
Other women’s quarterfinalists were Denmark’s Sofia Bisgaard & Clara Windeleff, Italians Valentina Gottardi & Aurora Mattavelli and Emma Glagau & Ruby Sorra from Canada. Valentina got to play with Marta Menegatti at the World Tour Finals last summer and Ruby is committed to playing at Stanford with Xolani and Kate starting in 2023.
Canet and Rotar Claim the U19 World Championships
Arthur Canet and Teo Rotar had a busy summer on the world tour and gained some valuable experience. Playing in one and two-star tournaments meant they were always the youngest team in the field, sometimes playing pairs twice their age. This week, when they faced teams a mere two years older than them, it was no big deal. In the men’s youth division, younger players tend to struggle against more physical teams, but not Arthur and Teo. Only once did they play a team that wasn’t made up of 19-year-olds, but they humbled their opponents with a 14-0 combined set record. Rotar is 6’5” (195 cm) and Canet is 6’1” (185cm) and they are likely to grow a lot more. They are definitely threats to win many more youth championships, but could do a lot more than that.
In the final they defeated another team that surprised many in Netitorn Muneekul & Wachirawit Muadpha from Thailand. Netitorn and Wachirawit took second in last summer’s Asian U19 tournament, but at the world level they were often much smaller than the team on the other side of the net. That didn’t stop them from advancing all the way to the final match, which Canet and Rotar won 21-15, 21-14.
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Brazil’s Nicolas Capretti & Samuel Oselame fell to the Thais in the semis but took the bronze medal to ensure that the South American giants of beach volleyball didn’t go home empty handed.
Fourth place finishers Ivan Chuprinov & Vladislav Panchenko from Russia are also just 17. They won the European U18 title a couple of months ago, eliminating Canet and Rotar in the quarterfinals there. This time the French pulled off the win in the semifinal round. This could turn into a rivalry that lasts decades.
Capretti and Oselame edged the Russians for the bronze (22-20, 15-21, 15-11).
The best of the rest
The men’s 5th place finishers were Tomas Semerad & Jakub Sepka from Czech Republic, Oleksandr Boiko & Oleksii Bublyk from Ukraine, Maximilian Just & Momme Lorenz of Germany and Vilsomar Brito & Pedro Sousa from Brazil.
For a look at how the brackets played out last week, check out this link from bvbinfo.com.