Max Krafft and Luca Kesselmann together with their coach Conrad Johannes gained valuable experience at the recent FIVB u19 Beach Volleyball World Championships in Shangluo, China.
A spectacular event with an amazingly organized set-up saw the two 18-year-old DTS based boys playing in Group G, with USA, Costa Rica and Poland, in one of the toughest of the eight groups.
They lost all three their matches 2-0, but came close to winning one set against Poland (20-22) who topped the group and moved to the quarter-finals.
“We were leading in all the matches in the beginning which shows that we can keep up with the rest of the world, but the other countries have more match practice and play high level tournaments every week, which we in Namibia do not have,” commented coach Johannes.
As for the venue, Shangluo is a 2-million bustling city with the closest airport 140km away. It is called the health capital of China and the city made a spectacular event out of it, showcasing the constituency of Shanxxi in order to empower this emerging region.
“We had more spectators at our training session than we ever had in any tournament,” commented Kesselmann.
“The centre court is always packed and people are queuing to watch. Big screens in the city and next to stadium show all the matches and most of the local people of Shanglou have never seen western people, meaning taking photos of all the visitors was a daily routine,” he added.
The results were as follows:
USA vs Namibia, 21-16, 21-9
Costa Rica vs Namibia, 21-16, 21-18
Poland vs Namibia, 21-11, 22-20
The Namibian team will now go back to the drawing board and plan their next venture, which will be the u21 World Championships qualification round in 2025.
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