Both crowns at last week’s Queen & King of the Court beach volleyball event in Utrecht (pictured in the main photo; credits: Set Vexy Productions / Queen & King of the Court) went to mixed Dutch-Brazilian partnerships. Raisa Schoon & Ana Patricia Ramos triumphed in the women’s competition, while Stefan Boermans & George Wanderley topped the final standings in the men’s event. The Danish-Norwegian pairing of Sofia Bisgaard & Sunniva Helland-Hansen finished women’s runners-up, while the bronze went to Floor Hogenhout & Nigella Negenman of the Netherlands. The Dutch-Swedish tandem of Matthew Immers & Jonatan Hellvig and the French-Latvian combo of Teo Rotar & Martins Plavins completed the men’s podium.
Schoon & Ana Patricia dominated the women’s competition. They came out first in Pool B to jump straight into the semifinals. In Semifinal A, the Dutch-Brazilian pairing won all three rounds of play and made another direct leap into Sunday’s Final, joined by the team of Lithuania’s Gerda Grudzinskaite and New Zealand’s Olivia MacDonald, who topped Semifinal B. The other three teams participating in the Final were determined through a Playoff round, followed by a Semifinal C – the Dutch-Swiss duo of Katja Stam & Leona Kerner, the all-Dutch pair of Floor Hogenhout & Nigella Negenman, and the Danish-Norwegian tandem of Sofia Bisgaard & Sunniva Helland-Hansen.
Grudzinskaite & MacDonald were eliminated from the Final after the opening 15 minutes. Following a thrilling second round, Stam & Kerner were also forced to bow out, narrowly finishing fourth. The deciding round could have lasted another 15 minutes, but finished earlier as reigning European champion Schoon and reigning Olympic champion Ana Patricia took less time to race to 15 points and claimed the throne. Bisgaard & Helland-Hansen finished second with nine points from the third round, while wild cards Hogenhout & Negenman took an impressive third place with six points.
Queen of the Court Utrecht 2026: all results
Boermans & George did not start well and finished the first round of Pool A bottom of the standings. In the second round, however, they emerged on top and progressed to the semifinals. The Dutch-Brazilian duo went on to win Semifinal A after topping the table only in the third round and moved on to the Final. Semifinal B propelled the Swedish-Austrian combination of Jacob Holting Nilsson & Tim Berger to the Final, while the French-Latvian pairing of Teo Rotar & Martins Plavins, the Norwegian-Austrian duo of Christian Sorum & Timo Hammarberg and the Dutch-Swedish partnership of Matthew Immers & Jonatan Hellvig came in via the Semifinal C pathway.
Sorum & Hammarberg finished fifth after the first round of the Final. The remaining four teams produced a breathtaking second round, at the end of which reigning European champion Holting Nilsson and his partner Berger were eliminated. In the deciding round, Boermans & George Wanderley led for the most part, but Immers & Hellvig mounted a superb comeback. They drew level on 14 points each in the final seconds, but Boermans & George had recorded the longer scoring streak on the King’s Side and were therefore crowned champions. Rotar & Plavins collected seven points to finish in third place.
