Sakiai Gulbele is a champion of Challenger held in France. The Lithuanian team won all five games in the tournament to clinch the trophy, the first since Ulaanbaatar Challenger in May. They got the ticket for Utrecht Masters, the seventh competition in this season’s World Tour. It was a fun and entertaining weekend for passionate supporters in Paris commune.
Danube and Rouen got a ticket to the main tournament from the first qualification pool .Ermont and Dusseldorf progressed to the final competition from the second qualification pool.
Group games were also set to be played on Saturday.
Sakiai and Tel-Aviv qualified for the final 8 through group A.
Jeddah and Trakai progressed from pool B to the quarterfinals.
Vienna and NY Harlem got the tickets to the elimination stage in group C.
Versailles and Belgrade were first-placed and second-placed teams respectively in pool D.
Sunday was reserved for quarterfinals, semifinals, and final game.
In the first quarterfinal, Sakiai pulled out a victory over NY Harlem with 21-19. Versailles beat Trakai with 21-16. Partizan won against Jeddah with 20-15. Vienna defeated Tel-Aviv with 22-12.
Sakiai defeated Versailles with 21-15 in the first semifinal clash. Vienna won against Belgrade with 21-19.
The final game was held between the Austrian team Vienna and the Lithuanian club Sakiai. Vienna was in better form last month than their opponents.
Paulis Beliavicius led Sakiai to fast advantage- 7-2. Vienna then started working on the Stefan Stojacic fuel and reduced the advantage to 11-6. Aurelijus Pukelis was another player in Sakiai’s squad who had a good day. The Lithuanian team went to an elusive 18-9 lead. The same player scored a decisive shot and closed the final game. Sakiai beat Vienna with 21-11.
You can see highlights from that game here:
Aurelius Pukelis, Sakiai’s megastar, was on fire during the whole tournament and got the title of a best scorer with 39 points. Aurelius also won the MVP award of the competition.
Sakiai and Vienna received invitations for Utrecht Masters. Teams that already participate in Netherland are Liman, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Belgrade, Vilnius, Lublin, Utrecht, and Ventspils.
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