Luxemburgish Beachvolley Championship in Capellen

This year, once again, the national beachvolleyball championship was co-organized by the FLVB and the volleyballclub of Mamer.

The women's competition took place on Saturday 7th July, with 12 teams competing and the men's competition on Sunday 8th July saw 16 teams being in fight for the championship title.

If the victory of Zambon-Grethen was no big surprise, even if the victory had to be earned, Steinbach-Hasdorf played a really big tournament to finish on a well deserved 2nd place. The third team on the podium was Weber-Delcourt, the young ladies from Mamer, who confirmed their good result of last year.

In the men's competition, Tunchev and Freidenfels from Diekirch won the final game against the official national team Angelsberg-Belhaouci. Third place went to Mendes-Zielinski from the club of Walferdange.

Congratulations to all the teams for their results and especially to the 2012 champions, Zambon-GrethenTunchev-Freidenfels !! and

Hopefully we meet them back again at the 2013 Luxemburgish Beachvolley Championship in Steinfort, to defend their title.

Last but not least, two critical remarks concerning the championship and the next Games of the small states of Europe (GSSE) in 2013:

The championship mode was a classical 1-2-BBQ, which seemed not really necessary if you have only 12 or 16 teams competing. But if you decide to play in this kind of tournament mode, you have to be really sure about a correct seed-list representing the strength of the teams. As this is quite difficult as there is no official ranking-list, the FLVB chose to decide by draw about the seed-list which can be catastrophic if the good teams are eliminating themselves in the first rounds. Very fortunately, looking at the final podiums, the result seems nevertheless be ok in comparison to the strength of the teams. And it also seems as if the FLVB will try to consider the results of the 2012 tournaments in Luxembourg to establish the 2013 seed-list.

The second remark concerns the qualification mode for the next GSSE. If everyone with an official playing license has the right to form a team in order to try to qualify by obtaining 60 points at selected beachvolley tournaments, it seems that the FLVB decided to name an offical men's team, without even considering other teams, probably also reaching the goal of 60 points. If more than one team fulfills the selection criteria, the FLVB has to establish a ranking of the teams (for example by playing a special tournament) with the right to not support a team for sporty or other reasons. The remaining teams will be proposed to the COSL who must confirm the selection, knowing that 2 teams can be selected (A and B) with the possibility to replace team A by team B in case of injury or other problems making it impossible to compete. Selecting a team B could also be extremely helpful in the final preparation weeks before the competition.

But it seems that there is only one team worth supporting in the eyes of the FLVB, or is it furthermore a strategy from the technical director to "park" two spare players of the national indoor team. I sincerely wish good luck to Ben and Djamel, they are probably the best luxemburgish beachvolley pair trying at the moment to qualify for the 2013 GSSE, but it is a pity that the qualification phase is not used to raise the competition level by taking in consideration some other teams.

It's only by this way that the beachvolleyball level can be raised in Luxembourg!