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Raisa Schoon and Katja Stam continue to enjoy a great deal of success in their still young careers as the Dutch rising stars have advanced to the gold medal match of the A1 CEV EuroBeachVolley Vienna 2021 presented by Swatch on Saturday morning.

The 19-year-old Schoon and the 22-year-old Stam, who were the youngest team to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, came out on top of a tough battle with another extremely successful young team from the continent and fellow Olympians, Latvians Tina Graudina, 23, and Anastasija Kravcenoka, 24, winning the three-set (21-15, 15-21, 15-11) semifinal at the Red Bull Beach Arena.

“I can’t believe it,” Stam said after the match. “We played a really good first set, but let our level drop a little bit on the second one. The third set was tough, but we kept fighting and it went our way in the end. We try to communicate after every point, won or lost, and to take something positive of it and I think that gives us confidence to keep pushing.”

With at least a silver medal guaranteed, Schoon has already matched the best result of her mother, former Dutch player Debora Schoon-Kadijk, who finished second in the EuroBeachVolley in 1998 and third in 2000.

The 2019 EuroBeachVolley winners, Graudina and Kravcenoka, who finished fourth in Tokyo last week, will try to secure their second podium appearance in the event in the bronze medal match.

"I think they just figured out what to do and how to win the three last points," Graudina said. "We feel really disappointed right now because we've been struggling to go past the semifinals in most of our most recent events but now we can only focus on the next match."

The second semifinal, to be played shortly at the Red Bull Beach Arena between Swiss Nina Betschart and Tanja Hüberli and Germans Karla Borger and Julia Sude, will determine the Dutch opponents in the gold medal match at the Austrian capital.

The women’s bronze and gold medal matches in Vienna will both be played on Saturday’s afternoon.