Stare Jablonki, Poland, June 15, 2013 – Daria Paszek and Katarzyna Kociolek, Poland’s youngest team, will have an early introduction to the highest level of beach volleyball and need all the support of their home crowd after they were placed in Pool B with the women’s leading seeds Chen Xue and Zhang Xi of China at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships following the confirmation of the groups on Friday.
The Chinese pair won the bronze medals from Rome 2011 and while they have Olympic bronze from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the fact they missed out on a medal at London 2010 has proven to be a major driving force for them this year.
Finish twins Emilia and Erika Nystrom and Slovakia’s Natalia Dubovcova and Dominika Nestarcova are the other teams in the pool.
Second seeds April Ross and Jennifer Kessy, 2009 world champions and London 2012 silver medallists, are in a Pool C with Dutch wildcard pair Laura Bloem and Rebekka Kadijk and fellow US team Lauren Fendricks and Brittany Hochevar. Another NORCECA team, Jamie-Lynn Broder and Kristina Valjas complete the pool.
There was one late change to the teams after Emily Day stepped in to replace Whitney Pavlik as Summer Ross’ partner.
Men’s first seeds and reigning world champions Emanuel Rego and Alison Cerutti begin the defence of their title in a pool that features London 2012 bronze medallist Martins Plavins and his new partner Janis Peda, Italian twins Matteo and Paolo Ingrosso and Poland’s Jaroslaw Lech and Damian Wojtasik.
Poland’s leading team Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel are pooled with Spain’s Inocencio Lario Carrillo and Miguel Angelo de Amo, Isaac Kapa and Christopher McCugh of Australia and Chilean cousins Marco and Esteban Grimalt.
Second seeds, Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal’s feature in a pool against North American rivals Juan Virgen and Lombardo Ontiveros of Mexico, rising Austrian pair Alexander Huber and Robert Seidl, as well as newly former Swiss duo Sebastian Chevallier and Mats Kovatsch.
Both the men’s and women’s draws featured pool play of 12 groups of four before teams advance to two rounds of single elimination matches. Pool winners automatically qualify for the second qualification round, while teams that finish in second and third place face off in the first elimination round. From then on it is straight elimination.