Swiss beach volleyball tandem on the rise

Of the six sports being contested at the Aurora Games, the all-women sports festival coming to Times Union Center from Aug. 20 to 25, beach volleyball may have lured the best field.

Tandems from the U.S. (April Ross-Alix Klineman) and Canada (Sarah Paven-Melissa Humana-Paredes) that met in the World Championships final last month in Hamburg, Germany, are in the Games. So are the 2018 silver-medal World Championships team of Barbora Hermannova and Marketa Slukova from the Czech Republic (which didn't compete this year because of an injury to Slukova).

It is such a strong field that the fourth team, the duo of Tanja Huberli and Nina Betschart from Switzerland, was flattered when it was included.

"We were wondering why they invited us," Huberli said. "We felt honored to be invited when we saw which other teams are competing. We feel honored to play in this tournament."

Like the other teams, the Swiss are on track to play in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Huberli and Betschart showed their worth by making the semifinals of the World Championships, losing in three tight sets to Pavan and Humana-Paredes, 23-21, 17-21, 19-17 in the semifinals.

Huberli and Betschart lost the bronze-medal match to a pair from Australia.

"Fourth place is a great result for us," Huberli said. "We were talking that we can go far if we play well, but we didn't expect that we'd last until the semifinals. We fought a close game and we're disappointed about the missed opportunity to make into the finals, but fourth place is great."

"In the beginning," Betschart added, "we were disappointed because we just lost a medal, but later we were proud and happy at the way we played."

The result boosted the Swiss duo to No. 10 in the most recent FIVB beach rankings and eighth in the women's Olympic ranking.

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