Victoria Shalaevskaya and Victoria Sekretova
In the match for bronze, they beat their rivals from Russia, Yelizaveta Zaionchkovskaya and Darya Rudykh, two matches to one (21:18, 15:21, 15:11).
In the first match, our Belarusian girls, Victoria Shalaevskaya and Victoria Sekretova, created an initial score of 16:12 — but failed to preserve this comfortable advantage due to errors and hard Russian attacks, which brought the score to 18:18. However, they managed to win three points and finish the game in their favour — 21:18.
In the second match, Victoria Sekretova, a pupil of Minsk volleyball school, did well near the net, bringing the score to 6:6, but the Russians then took the lead through their service — 12:6, ending with Russia winning the match.
A tie-break was then used to decide the fate of the U20 Beach Volleyball European Championship bronze. Victoria Sekretova continued her attacks successfully — 6:4 — and, when the score reached 8:4, the Russians asked for a break. However, this didn’t allow them to seize the initiative, and the final score stood at 15:11 in favour of our Belarusian duo.
This was the first bronze win for Victoria Shalaevskaya and Victoria Sekretova at the U20 Beach Volleyball European Championship. In 2015, they came fourth at the European forum (U20). Belarusians Alexander Dedkov and Yevgeny Vishnevsky have claimed previous awards in beach volleyball at continental tournaments ; in 2012, they took bronze in an U23 tournament in Dutch Assen.
By Igor Svitov
