Duos from FIVB Volleyball Empowerment supported Ukraine and Brazil made the podiums at the Corigliano Rossano Futures on the Beach Pro Tour. Ukraine’s Dmytro Kozii & Sviatoslav Nahornyi celebrated the men’s silver, while Brazil’s Giulia Gavio & Carolina Sallaberry Cavalcanti brought home the women’s bronze. Italy’s Enrico Rossi & Daniele Lupo triumphed with the men’s trophy, while Germany’s Jonas Reinhardt & Milan Sievers completed the podium. The women’s gold went to another German team – Rika Dieckmann & Sarah Schulz – with Poland’s Aleksandra Gromadowska & Agnieszka Adamek finishing runners-up.
The FIVB Volleyball Empowerment program has been supporting the Ukraine Volleyball Federation in continuing its volleyball and beach volleyball activities since 2022 as part of an ongoing Memorandum of Understanding, which has so far provided total funding of USD 1,046,000.
20-year-old Dmytro Kozii & Sviatoslav Nahornyi of Ukraine, seeded seventh in Corigliano Rossano, secured their first Beach Pro Tour medal together with a four-match winning streak. They lost their first set of the competition in the semifinals, where they came back to beat fifth-seeded Hungarians Artur Hajos & Lukas Niemeier by 2-1 (14-21, 21-18, 15-13).
Three-time Olympian and Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic silver medalist Daniele Lupo and Tokyo 2020 Olympian Enrico Rossi decorated their reunion on the Beach Pro Tour with a perfect run of five straight-set wins towards the Corigliano Rossano gold. They had not appeared together on the Tour since April 2024 and this was, in fact, their second Tour gold together, after the Torquay Challenge triumph upon the duo’s debut back in 2022. In the Corigliano Rossano Futures semifinals, third-seeded Rossi & Lupo mastered a 2-0 (21-15, 21-11) shutout of ninth-seeded Germans Jonas Reinhardt & Milan Sievers, and in the gold medal showdown (pictured in the main photo; source: cev.eu), they celebrated a 2-0 (21-17, 21-19) win over Kozii & Nahornyi.
In Corigliano Rossano, Milan Sievers not only achieved his first-ever Beach Pro Tour match win, but also crowned the Tour debut of his pairing with Jonas Reinhardt with a spot on the podium. They bounced back from their only setback of the tournament, in the semis against Rossi & Lupo, with a 2-1 (17-21, 23-21, 15-11) turnaround in the bronze medal playoff against Hajos & Niemeier.
The Confederacao Brasileira de Voleibol has been granted USD 42,000 in FIVB Volleyball Empowerment coach support for their national beach volleyball teams. Their women’s pairs benefit from the coaching of Ricardo Cunha de Freitas, Leticia De Amorim Pessoa and Iago Oliveira Hercowitz.
Corigliano Rossano bracket leaders Giulia Gavio & Carolina Sallaberry Cavalcanti of Brazil collected their first Beach Pro Tour hardware. After suffering their only lost sets of the tournament in a narrow 2-1 (21-16, 20-22, 16-14) semifinal defeat at the hands of fifth-seeded Rika Dieckmann & Sarah Schulz of Germany, the Brazilian pair recovered with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-11) sweep of the bronze medal game against 14th-seeded Italians Cindy Lee Fezzi & Jessica Belliero Piccinin.
Dieckmann & Schulz moved through the tournament in Italy undefeated. However, in the last four of their five matches of the tournament, they were pushed to tie-breaker resolutions. In the final, they celebrated a 2-1 (21-19, 14-21, 15-12) victory over sixth-seeded Aleksandra Gromadowska & Agnieszka Adamek of Poland to crown their Beach Pro Tour debut as a team with gold, first on the Tour for 27-year-old Schulz and second for 17-year-old Dieckmann.
The Polish duo also reached the final undefeated. They lost their first sets of the tournament in the 2-1 (21-18, 22-24, 15-11) semifinal win over Fezzi & Belliero Piccinin, but the victory secured them their first-ever Beach Pro Tour podium.
20 women’s and 26 men’s pairs representing 23 different federations took part in the Corigliano Rossano Futures.
The next Futures stop on the Beach Pro Tour will be held in Alanya, Turkiye from October 15 to 18.
