Raisa Schoon and Katja Stam continue to enjoy a great deal of success in their still young careers as the Dutch rising stars have advanced to the gold medal match of the A1 CEV EuroBeachVolley Vienna 2021 presented by Swatch on Saturday morning.
The 19-year-old Schoon and the 22-year-old Stam, who were the youngest team to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, came out on top of a tough battle with another extremely successful young team from the continent and fellow Olympians, Latvians Tina Graudina, 23, and Anastasija Kravcenoka, 24, winning the three-set (21-15, 15-21, 15-11) semifinal at the Red Bull Beach Arena.
“I can’t believe it,” Stam said after the match. “We played a really good first set, but let our level drop a little bit on the second one. The third set was tough, but we kept fighting and it went our way in the end. We try to communicate after every point, won or lost, and to take something positive of it and I think that gives us confidence to keep pushing.”
With at least a silver medal guaranteed, Schoon has already matched the best result of her mother, former Dutch player Debora Schoon-Kadijk, who finished second in the EuroBeachVolley in 1998 and third in 2000.
