Düsseldorf, Germany. After a two-week long league, where teams played each other twice, the New Beach Order‘s (NBO) competition German Beach Trophy is entering the playoff stage. Tomorrow, the two Austrian teams, Max Trummer/Felix Friedl, Julian Hörl/Laurenz Leitner and the two Slovenian players Tjaša Kotnik and Nejc Zemljak with their interim German partners (Klinke and Schneider) will start with the quarterfinals in a beach volleyball’s unique playoff series, best of 3 matches.
Following the strict hygiene protocols, the event is taking place inside the Mitsubishi Electric Event Hall in Düsseldorf. Eight male and female teams played against each other for two straight weeks. After 14 Rounds or having played each opponent twice, the best 6 teams qualified for the playoffs. The first two placed teams advanced directly into the semifinal. In the quarterfinals the 3rd placed team faces the 6th and the 4th goes against the 5th ranked team.
The Slovenian National Champion Tjaša Kotnik and her German interim partner Leonie Klinke finished in 5th place and will start their quarterfinal berth against the Swiss duo Caluori/Lutz tomorrow at 15:30.
On the men’s side, the Austrian duo Trummer/Friedl who finished 4th in the regular part’s rankings will start the first match of the quarterfinal round against the German Duo Betzien/Rudolph tomorrow at 19:30.
Right after them at 21h, the other Austrian Duo Hörl/Leitner will play the Slovenian-German combination Schneider/Zemljak. The matchup between Hörl and Zemljak will also be a special one, since they competed as a team in the first German Beach Trophy edition and also joined forces in the week leading into the playoffs with a week’s best performance with a 5-2 win record.
The other Austrian teams Schützenhöfer/Plesiutschnig and Strauss/Strauss participated only in one of the two weeks (7 of 14 matches) and despite their great performances consequently did not have enough points to qualify for the playoff round.
In probably the most interactive (beach volleyball) event, the matches are live broadcasted on the Trops4 twitch channel. Games are free of charge, spectators with a twitch account can also comment and interact with the live-commentators, who are situated court-side.
The current German Beach Trophy is already the second edition of the same competition this year. The inaugural event, which took place between the first two months, was won by the Austrian sisters, Nadine and Theresa Strauss.
Prize Money is still to be determined, as it is being raised through spectator and sponsor donations. In the first edition, the number was around 45.000 Euros.
New Beach Order Links:
Results
Live Stream
Youtube – NBO
Youtube – Trops4
Instagram
