Americans Defeat Germans in Match-up of Women's Beach Volleyball

Branagh and Youngs (United States) Defeat Pohl and Rou (Germany) in Women's Olympic Beach Volleyball on Monday

After knocking of The Netherlands on Saturday during their first match of these Olympics, the tandem of Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs took to the sand again on Monday to face one of the German teams. Branagh/Youngs are the second of two women's teams competing in the Beach Volleyball competition at Beijing, China during these Olympics. They are currently one set of 64 teams that are in the pool play, constituting one of four teams located in Pool E, with The Netherlands, Cuba, and Germany.

The match was scheduled to pit Branagh and Youngs against a German team of Okka Rau and Stephanie Pohl, who had defeated a team from Cuba in their opening match quite handily. Right out of the gate, the match proved to be quite competitive, with Branagh and Youngs looking very strong on the sand. The weather wasn't completely cooperating though, as a slight mist could be seen coming down around the players. Both Americans seemed to present a duplicate of each other, with strong attacks supplemented by great service attempts. Their serves were a little shaky though, and it would be quite evident looking at the end results, as they had 7 service faults in total.

The German duo looked strong, getting their serves in, but it seemed like Okka was a great player coupled with a less talented Pohl. It could have just seemed that way though, as Okka was having a lot more success on attacking the net.

In a hard fought first set, the Americans came away with a 21-17 victory, and looked like they had a good handle on how they wanted to deal with their German counterparts. Youngs shined, and continued to show off highlight reel digs heading into the second set, as she retrieved 6 on dives into the sand. Youngs looked very impressive, and by keeping on the attack, the pair won the second set as well by a score of 21-16.