Brazilian girls secure at least one medal in Larnaka

Larnaka, Cyprus, July 30, 2016 – With a team in each semifinal on Sunday, Brazil has secured at least one podium place at the FIVB U19 World Championships in Larnaka. Eduarda ‘Duda’ Lisboa and Victoria Lopes Pereira face Americans Kathryn Plummer and Milica Mirkovic and Vitoria De Souza Rodrigues and Ana Carolina de Almeida play Nika Daalderop and Mexime van Driel from the Netherlands for a spot in the final.The 17-year old Duda is eyeing her fifth medal in a FIVB age-group tournament. She won silver at the U23 (Myslowice, 2013), two golds at the U19 (Porto, 2013 and 2014) and gold at the U21 (Lucerne, 2016) with different partners. She has also collected two golds, a silver and a bronze medal on the World Tour with her regular partner Elize Maia.Duda and Victoria are the only team to reach the semifinals with straight wins. On Saturday they defeated Norway’s Kirstine Garder and Emilie Olimstad (21-13, 21-16) and Czechs Tereza Kotlasova and Daniela Resova (21-13, 21-9).Their opponents in the semifinal, USA’s Plummer and Mirkovic, came all the way from qualification. They knocked out Cyprus’ Vasiliki Chatzikonstanta and Katerina Zakchaiou (21-15, 21-15), Austria’s Victoria Deisl and Ilona Kiss (21-12, 21-10) and Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Paula Neciporuka (24-22, 21-19) in the elimination rounds on Saturday.“It has been a long tournament and a long day”, said Mirkovic after …

continue reading in source www.fivb.org