Paraguay’s Michelle & Poletti rise up for their first Beach Pro Tour gold with FIVB Volleyball Empowerment

• Michelle Valiente & Giuliana Poletti of Paraguay celebrate their first Beach Pro Tour gold at Battipaglia Futures with coach support from FIVB Volleyball Empowerment

• USA’s Hagen Smith & Logan Webber also celebrate their first Tour gold, after topping the men’s podium and in Italy

• Host country pairs collect a total of three medals

• The men’s bronze goes to Germany

Just a week after celebrating their first-ever Beach Pro Tour medal, Paraguay’s Michelle Valiente & Giuliana Poletti (pictured in the main photo; credits: cev.eu), benefitting from FIVB Volleyball Empowerment coach support, celebrated their first-ever Beach Pro Tour gold, winning the Battipaglia Futures in Italy on Sunday.

Two Italian teams - Reka Orsi Toth & Giada Bianchi and Maria Rachele Mancinelli & Aurora Mattavelli - completed the women’s podium. The USA’s Hagen Smith & Logan Webber topped the men’s podium and also celebrated their first gold on the Tour. Italy’s Gianluca Dal Corso & Marco Viscovich took silver and Germany’s Jonas Sagstetter & Maximilian Just claimed bronze.

Battipaglia Futures women’s gold medallists Michelle Valiente & Giuliana Poletti of Paraguay (Photo credits: cev.eu)

The women’s national beach volleyball teams of Paraguay have so far been supported with a total of CHF 180,000 in coach support from FIVB Volleyball Empowerment, and their National Federation’s beach volleyball programme has received another CHF 5,000 for national team coaches development and CHF 9,000 in beach volleyball equipment. 26-year-old Valiente and 23-year-old Poletti followed up on their Cervia Futures silver from a week earlier with Battipaglia Futures gold after winning all their five matches at the tournament and losing only a set along the way. In Sunday’s semifinals, the third-seeded Paraguayans mastered a 2-0 (21-19, 21-16) win over 11th-seeded Mancinelli & Mattavelli and it was the second time they swept a game against these opponents, after also beating them in straight sets in the Pool C final. The gold medal showdown was also a straight-set affair, although fourth-seeded Orsi Toth & Bianchi managed to push the first set into overtime, 2-0 (24-22, 21-12).

Orsi Toth & Bianchi, who had finished third in Cervia, now claimed silver in Battipaglia. They secured their pair’s third Beach Pro Tour podium in a nail-biting 2-1 (12-21, 21-19, 19-17) semifinal comeback against ninth-seeded Germans Julia Sude & Lea Kunst.

In the third place match, Mancinelli & Mattavelli produced a 2-0 (21-19, 21-7) win over Sude & Kunst to pick up their second Beach Pro Tour medal, after another Futures bronze from Corigliano Rossano last year.

Battipaglia Futures men’s gold medallists Hagen Smith & Logan Webber of the USA (Photo credits: cev.eu)

In the men’s tournament, 29-year-old Smith and 28-year-old Webber, who had collected a silver medal from last year’s Halifax Futures, now grabbed their first Beach Pro Tour gold. The sixth-seeded Americans stumbled in their Pool C winners’ match against Brazil’s Pedro Oliveira & Henrique Barros, but then went on a four-game winning streak, crowned by a 2-0 (21-17, 21-19) semifinal win over second-seeded Carlo Bonifazi & Davide Benzi of Italy and a 2-0 (21-18, 21-15) sweep of the final against top-seeded Dal Corso & Viscovich.

In the other semifinal, Dal Corso & Viscovich mastered a 2-0 (21-16, 21-18) victory over 10th-seeded Sagstetter & Just to secure their second medal in a row, after winning gold in Cervia a week earlier. The Battipaglia silver was the Italian duo’s fourth overall Beach Pro Tour medal.

In the third place match, the German pair recovered with a 2-1 (18-21, 21-14, 15-11) comeback win over Benzi & Bonifazi to decorate their partnership’s Tour debut with bronze.

The Battipaglia Futures 2024 medallists (Photo credits: cev.eu)

28 men’s and 28 women’s teams representing a total of 21 different countries from all five Continental Confederations took part in the Battipaglia Futures. The next Futures event will be in neighbouring Switzerland this week, hosted in Speiz from 29 May to 2 June.

Battipaglia Futures: results and standings