PORTIMÃO HOSTED THE FUTURE OF BEACH VOLLEYBALL
28-09-2015

More opportunities to play, more events such as this and more competition, these are the expressed desires of the young athletes who attended Portimão Beach Volley Youth Summer Festival – Let Them Play, an event that colored with joy Praia da Rocha over the last weekend.
At the end of Youth Summer Festival, which was attended by over a hundred athletes, the feedback pointed towards one direction: the importance of having events of this nature, to promote beach volleyball and to bring more youngsters to the sport, following the guidelines of the CEV which is working in growing the sport with the national federations.

It’s a vision shared in Portugal, as referred by António Espírito Santo, President of the Volleyball Association of Alentejo & Algarve:
“Every event gives an impulse to our work, even more being the Youth Summer Festival, for its greatness and everything that stands for. It was very important for this region to be able to host such an event, because, the more competition the more appealing is the sport, this giving it more visibility. We have in Algarve and Alentejo the best beaches in the country, therefore it makes sense to us that we should make every effort to develop beach volleyball here”, stated.

But the stars of this festival also voiced their feelings.
“The Youth Summer Festival is a great moment to get to know other kids, to socialize and specially to bring more young ones to the sport. For us, that we live at Portimão, it was very good to host athletes from other regions of the country”, stated in one voice, Beatriz Guerreiro, GuilhermeFigueiredo and Mafalda Costa.

These three friends took part of the one hundred players who accepted the challenge to have one last great day of beach volleyball before they concentrate in school, which began last week. This event reminded them the summer vacations as the sun presented them with a warm welcome at Praia da Rocha.

The choice of Portimão for the CEV Youth Summer Festival was part of the development program of the Portuguese Volleyball Federation. The project created four youth beach volley development centres in the region of Algarve, namely Albufeira, Faro, Lagos and Portimão.