WEYMOUTH 2

BLACK COUNTRY 3

WEYMOUTH Beach Volleyball Club got 2023 off to a disappointing start when they lost 3-2 in sets to Black Country in an enthralling two-hour National League Division One match at Redlands.

Weymouth went into the clash with a number of changes to the squad last fielded before Christmas.

Lucas Pusvaskis has now left the club having moved to the USA and Liam Tewkesbury, Matt Hunter and Ollie Smith were all out injured.

However, Weymouth did introduce two new signings into the squad.

Local beach player Zoltan Hegedus has joined the team and he has been followed by youngster Seb Smith who has switched from Wessex Volleyball Club.

READ MORE: Weymouth Beach suffer double defeat up north

Probably as a result of these changes and coming back after the long Christmas break, Weymouth struggled to gel, looked sluggish in the back court and were struggling to set up successful attacks.

Black Country got off to a good start in both sets and Weymouth were unable to pull back those poor starts and lost the first two sets 25-17 and 25-19 respectively.

However, in the third set Weymouth Beach began to get into the match, a solid service receive from man-of-the-match Elliott Sawyer, Valdis Baranovs and Zoltan Hegedus gave Weymouth’s attack a chance to get into the game and Smith started showing why he is highly regarded with some excellent hitting.

Weymouth’s Ryan Stout was also able to start setting more to the middle attackers Darren Harding and Sam Groom and the Seasiders gradually were able to get on top and ran out winners of the next two sets 25-22 and 25-21 to level up the match at 2-2.

The fixture was all set up for a dramatic final set but Weymouth got off to a poor start making some uncharacteristic attacking mistakes and Black Country took a deserved lead which despite Weymouth’s best efforts they could not come back from and lost the decisive set 15-11.

Weymouth now have two away matches in the coming weeks at Essex Blaze and London Aces before their next home match on Saturday, February 11 against Manchester Marvels at Redlands.