Molly Turner and Madelyne Anderson of the United States will meet Taravadee Naraphornrapat and Worapeerachayakorn Kongphopsarutawadee of Thailand in one of the women’s semifinals at the second Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Challenge event in Dubai on Sunday. In the other, another American duo, Katie Horton and Julia Scoles will take on top-seeded Germans Isabel Schneider and Julia Sude.

· Watch all matches at the Beach Pro Tour Challenge events in Dubai live on Volleyball TV.

For the pairing of 20-year-old Anderson and 26-year-old Turner, it will be the first time to play in a Challenge level semifinal. Previously, the American duo had a Beach Pro Tour gold medal at the Futures level. On Saturday, the 14th-seeded team started in the playoffs with a 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) win over eighth-seeded Zhu Lingdi and Wang Fan of China in the round of 16. In their quarterfinal against 15th-seeded German qualifiers Leonie Kortzinger and Lea Sophie Kunst, Turner and Anderson proved better than the opponents in offence and managed another straight-set victory, 2-0 (21-17, 22-20), to claim their place among the semifinalists.

“It’s so exciting! This is really new for me. I’m just running on adrenaline right now...,” Anderson told Volleyball World right after that game. “Yes, it’s super exciting, especially doing it with Molly. The college game is really different from this game. For me, it’s a lot of learning, but I’m loving it so far.”

“We actually don’t live anywhere near each other, so in our first tournament (in Dubai) we were kind of feeling it out in a no-pressure situation, but in this tournament it feels like we finally got the groove, we finally got it down, and we kind of feel more comfortable,” Turner added. “We won a Futures tournament in Italy and a NORCECA event in the Dominican Republic, but this by far is the best we’ve played together, so it feels good.”

Naraphornrapat and Worapeerachayakorn made it to their second back-to-back semifinal, after doing so for the first time on the Beach Pro Tour earlier this week in the first Dubai tournament. They also mastered two straight-set wins on Saturday. In the round of 16, the third-seeded Thai duo outplayed USA’s Savannah Simo and Deahna Kraft by 2-0 (21-18, 21-16). They were quite convincing in the first set of their quarterfinal against fifth-seeded Zeng Jinjin and Wang Xinxin of China, but the second was pushed to overtime before Naraphornrapat and Worapeerachayakorn could celebrate with a 2-0 (21-14, 23-21) victory, mostly owing it to the eight serving aces they managed to put away during the match.

After winning the first Dubai Challenge bronze medals on Tuesday, Horton and Scoles progressed to the semifinals again. The sixth-seeded Americans had to come back from a set down in their round of 16 encounter with Switzerland’s Menia Bentele and Anna Lutz on the way to a 2-1 (18-21, 21-19, 15-13) victory. They were way more assertive in the quarterfinals as they mastered a speedy 2-0 (21-13, 21-15) shutout of Norway’s Sunniva Helland-Hansen and Emilie Olimstad, outpacing the opponents on all counts.

Schneider and Sude also had to fight back from a catastrophic first set against Ukraine’s Valentyna Davidova and Ievgeniia Baieva in the round of 16, but made their way to the quarterfinals with a 2-1 (12-21, 21-16, 15-10) win. They dominated their quarterfinal against fellow Germans Anna-Lena Grune and Sarah Schulz to hammer out a 2-0 (21-11, 21-12) blowout and move on to the semis. It will be the first Beach Pro Tour semifinal for this newly formed pair, but both Sude and Schneider have been there before with their regular partners, Karla Borger and Sandra Ittlinger, respectively.

Turner and Anderson will lock horns with Naraphornrapat and Worapeerachayakorn in the first semifinal on Sunday morning at 09:00 local time (05:00 UTC). Horton and Scoles will face Schneider and Sude an hour later.

Dubai 2nd Challenge: Schedule and results

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Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Dubai 2nd Challenge
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