Friday meant Quarter Finals! And it also meant that everyone we know from Gold Coast flew in. And I guess everyone else as well. It had been fairly empty on the stands up until Friday evening when it all of a sudden pretty much filled up. I am so glad we flew earlier and see at least one game of my other favorite teams because from QF’s, the focus was only on Sweden.

Games started at 13:30 today so we had plenty of time to eat breakfast and coordinate with people flying in. Laura and Tristan managed to fly in just in time for the first game of the day, The Icemen Sweden (Hölting Nilsson/Andersson) vs USA (Schalk/Shaw). Not many people on this game, but the Swedish cheerleading squad was very present. And afterward, having watched the replays, I can confirm everyone’s messages from back home: holy schmoly, we were on screen so much. The camera’s loved us, haha!

Little bit of a shaky start for the young ones. But not to worry, the right team won in the end with 21-18, 22-20. Which meant at least one Swedish team in the semis on Saturday!

In the evening session, the “old” (23 and 24 year old) Swedish boys (Åhman/Hellvig) were up against Brazil (Evandro/Arthur Lanci). I was so nervous before this game. What if they won? That would mean two out of four teams fighting for the gold would be from teeny tiny Sweden. Having watched the Brazilian team before, I knew the mental frustration of Evandro’s serve. I have no idea how he managed to get away with his foot faults when serving. I can’t remember which other game it was, but he got challenged by the other team and he always managed to somehow get away with moving the line with the sand before actually setting down his foot where the line was before. Insane.

We got to centre court fairly early to be able to sit next to the other Swedes. We all had designated seats all throughout every game actually, but since there were so few on the stands, it was so easy to just sit wherever you wanted. We were moved around a little bit, and we managed to stay together the whole game, but we were nervous of having to be moved around mid-game. Our designated seats were taken and it would have been annoying. But we got to watch the whole game pretty much undisturbed. The rest of the evening, we moved though.

The second Swedish quarterfinal was incredibly exciting. Rally after rally, mistakes on both ends, barely any aces and just point chasing all throughout. 22-20, 22-20. It doesn’t get more even than that.

The rest of the evening, we could finally relax. We got to witness Germany’s Ehlers/Wickler beat previous World Champions from Czech Perusic/Schweiner in a very exciting and even game. We also unfortunately got to watch Canada’s Melissa/Brandie get beaten by Brazil’s Carol/Rebecca in a three-seter. I rarely watch women’s beach volleyball games since Sweden don’t have any teams on this level. But I definitely have seen highlights from Brandie previously. She is incredible usually so I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to see her play her absolute best. The ferociousness she has when blocking is just incredible. I am really sad I didn’t get to witness that.