Jude Garcia, Krung Arbasto advance to AVC beach volleyball quarterfinals

PHI 1’s Jude Garcia/Arbasto Anthony Lemuel Jr in the 2021 AVC Asian Senior Beach Volleyball Championships. AVC PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines 1’s Jude Garcia and Krung Arbasto advanced to the quarterfinals after surviving a close three-setter against Qatar 2’s Ahmed Mahmoud and Saifeddin Elmajid, 22-20, 18-21, 15-12, in the 2021 AVC Asian Senior Beach Volleyball Championships Thursday in Phuket, Thailand.

Garcia and Arbasto earlier booked their slot in the knockout stage after a two-set sweep of Singapore’s Kingsley Tay and Melvin Goh Teng Kuan, 26-24, 21-16, in their final match of the preliminaries.

The two will take on Iran’s Bahman Salemiinjehboroun and Abolhassan Khakizadeh in the quarterfinals on Friday.

PHI 1’s Jude Garcia/Arbasto Anthony Lemuel Jr beat QAT 2’s Ahmed Mahmoud/Saifeddin Elmajid 2-1 (22-20, 18-21, 15-12) in 54 minutes in elimination round of last 16 in the 2021 Asian Senior Beach Volleyball Championships at Bang Tao Beach in Phuket, Thailand on Thursday.#AVCVolley pic.twitter.com/dHA8uDQr9p

— Asian Volleyball Confederation (@AsianVolleyball) November 25, 2021

The Philippines’ women pairs, however, didn’t fare better than in their respective final matches in the preliminaries.

Sisi Rondina and Bernadeth Pons, bronze medalists in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, of Philippines 1 lost to Japan’s Hasegawa Aiko and Sakaguchi Yurika, 21-17, 21-15, in their final match.

They took a 21-15, 24-22, win over Australia’s Alisha Stevens and Jana Milutovinic in their first match of the Thursday schedule to take an even 2-2 record in Pool D.

Gen Eslapor and Dij Rodriguez of Philippines 2 bowed to Australia’s Jasmine Fleming and Stefanie Fejes, 21-18, 21-14, in their final match after taking down Kazakhstan’s Alina Rachenko and Anastassiya Ukolova, 21-7, 21-19, in their first match of the day.

Philippines 2 ended the group stage at 2-2 in Pool A but settled for third place due to quotient.