USA's Fonoimoana/Wong advance in FIVB Beach Volleyball qualifier

Eric Fonoimoana and Kevin Wong of the United States scored a pair of international beach volleyball wins on Tuesday during the opening rounds of the 40-team Qualification Tournament of the first men's SWATCH-FIVB World Tour event of 2004 in Salvado, Brazil.

The two-day Qualification Tournament will place the final eight teams in the Main Draw where 24 tandems from 13 countries have already been certified, including 15 of the 16 top-ranked teams from the 2003 SWATCH-FIVB World Tour.

Three teams from the United States have already been placed in the Main Draw, including Dain Blanton/Jeff Nygaard, Dax Holdren/Stein Metzger and Todd Rogers/Sean Scott. Blanton and Nygaard, who won the 2003 SWATCH-FIVB World Tour season opener in Greece last June, finished the season as the 11th-ranked team internationally with three "final four" finishes.

After surviving a 64-minute match in the United States' country quota playoff with Casey Jennings and Matt Fuerbringer (19-21, 21-15 and 15-12), Fonoimoana and Wong entered the elimination rounds as the top-seeded team and defeated 32nd-seeded Farid Mussa and Jose Vasquez of Venezuela 21-17 and 21-13.

Jennings and Fuerbringer played an earlier country quota match Tuesday where they ousted Sean Rosenthal and Larry Witt 22-20 and 21-17 in 42 minutes. "It's a long way to travel to be eliminated earlier," said Fuerbringer. "I just did not play well, especially in the final two sets. You can not make mistakes against good teams, and today, I made too many mistakes."

To advance to the 32-team Main Draw that starts Thursday, Fonoimoana and Wong must defeat 16th-seeded Pedro Cunha and Pará Ferreira of Brazil. Playing in their first SWATCH-FIVB World Tour event together, the team of Cunha and Pará represents the "young and old" of Brazilian beach volleyball.

"Although they are a new team, you can not take any of the Brazilian teams lightly," said Wong after his second match Tuesday. "Although Pará has not been ranked internationally the past two years, he still won an event in Germany in 2002. We don't know about his partner, but they have been playing the regularly on the beach since last September and are probably in pretty good shape."

Pará is starting his 11th-season on the international tour with eight gold medal finishes, including the 1997 World Championship title with Guilherme Marques in Los Angeles. He is playing in his 95th FIVB event compared to Cunha's second. After eliminated a Brazilian team in the country quota round, Cunha and Pará ousted 1 th-seeded Kentaro Asahi Koichi Nishimura of Japan 21-18 and 21-15.

The 21-year old Cunha won the men's FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships U-21 championship last August in France when he and Pedro Solberg Salgado defeated Germany's Daniel Krug and Mischa Urbatzka in the gold medal match. Cunha and Adriano Fonseca won the silver medal at the U21-championships in 2002 at Catania, Italy.

"I'm still young at 30," said Pará, "but Cunha makes me feel old with his youthful play. "He's going to be a good one. However, he will find that the competition is very fierce at this level and he can not rest for a second. Overall, this is our second tournament together and we are just trying to figure out what is best for our team."

For more information on FIVB beach volleyball, go to the FIVB web site.