Teams from Hungary and Austria take Middle European Championship titles, hosts Slovenia happy with three-medal haul
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The Middle European Beach Volleyball Championships held in Kranj ended this past Sunday. Amidst tough competition from as many as seven countries, the local favourites from Slovenia claimed three medals (a silver and two bronze ones), while the new Middle European Champions are the Austrian duo Eva Freiberger/Katharina Holzer on the women’s side and Hungarian duo Artúr Hajós/Bence Attila Stréli in the men’s competition.
The Zavarovalnica Sava Kranj Open 2023 was the first international Beach Volleyball competition held in Kranj, Slovenia and it presented a level of participants and quality of performance that was beyond everyone’s expectations. Both the organisers and the players agreed that nearly all the best teams from all seven represented countries (Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Israel, Slovakia, and Slovenia) were present and claiming the title would be a substantial achievement.
Ahead of the tournament, Nejc Zemljak, one of the best Slovenian players said: “I was extremely surprised by the rank of the registered teams. We are talking about players who play in the Pro Tour Future Series, the Challenger Series, and even the Olympics! This will be a great event and it is difficult to predict the result because there will be quite a few strong and equal teams.”
Coming into the tournament, the defending MEVZA champions Vaclav Berčik and Matyaš Džavoronok of Czechia confirmed the main draw was an exceptionally tough one: “This year, the competition is tough, and we will be personally happy to make it out of the group stage. After that, we will see how it goes.” In the end, Berčik and Džavoronok were stopped by locals Nejc Zemljak and Klemen Šen in a straight 2-0 match in the quarterfinals. The first women’s seeds Miroslava Dunarova and Daniela Resova of Czechia were regarded as the favourites to win the tournament and felt in top form at the start of the event. “We are very excited to be here at the MEVZA tournament in Slovenia. We just came from Austria where we won the King of the Court event, so we are feeling extremely well,” said Dunarova, who in the end had to settle for silver.
But this was not the only surprise of the tournament. Perhaps the most notable was the collective effort of the local Slovenian teams. According to FIVB ranking points, none of them ranked even in the top 8, but they managed, with the help of an extremely engaged home crowd, to claim two bronze and one silver medal in the end. Klemen Šen and Nejc Zemljak, who had to concede victory in the final to the Hungarian pair Hajós/Stréli in a close match of two sets, commented after the game:
Klemen Šen and Nejc Zemljak (SLO)“There is a slight bitter taste after coming so close to the first place, but we should still be happy with second place in such strong competition. It was a pleasure to play in front of such an audience, and we are coming back for the gold next year.”
Their opponents confirmed that facing the home pair was challenging. “The second set was exceptionally tight and tough, especially due to the home crowd. It was a lot of fun to play in such an atmosphere, and we are very pleased to have won the title of Middle European champions,” summarised Artúr Hajós.
The men’s draw was the more dynamic one overall in terms of upsets. Interestingly, none of the very high quality and highly seeded Austrian duos made it to the semifinals. First seeds Florian Schnetzer/Lorenz Petutschnig, second seeds Felix Friedl/Alexander Huber, and fifth seeds Jakob Reiter/Laurenc Grössig were all stopped in the quarterfinals. The most surprising of these was the defeat of Olympian Alexander Huber and his teammate Felix Friedl by the Czech players Frantisek Knobloch and Lukas Kittel. The latter pair wrote a fantastic success story, as they made it all the way from the qualifications to the semifinals. “This is very unexpected for us because there are many matches between the qualifications and the last day. Today we showed two excellent performances against two Austrian teams, and it feels especially good to beat Xandi Huber,” said Lukas Kittel. In the end, the Czech team nearly made it to the podium, but to their misfortune ran into the 16th seeded Slovenian comeback duo Tadej Boženk and Vid Jakopin in the match for bronze. Tadej Boženk expressed his satisfaction with their 2-0 (21-15, 22-20) win and final third place:
Tadej Boženk (SLO)“I am very pleased with our achievement. We have not played together in a while, and Vid has been off the courts for a long time. Considering our preparation, I did not expect us to even reach the semifinals. So, all in all, an excellent achievement.”
