Williams and Prosser Defeat Nygaard and Blanton in Beach Opener
August 14, 2004 | Bruin Athletics
Aug. 14, 2004
UCLA graduates Mark Williams and Jeff Nygaard began their Olympic beach volleyball competition in Athens, Greece on Saturday. Unfortunately, they were on opposite sides of the net. Williams and his partner Julien Prosser of Australia upset Nygaard and Dain Blanton, the gold medalist in 2000, 21-16, 21-14 in a match that actually ended Sunday morning. The 42-minute match marked Blanton's first defeat in six Olympic starts. "They played well enough to win and we did not," said Nygaard, who is competing in his third Olympics after performing in 1996 and 2000 with the United States Indoor Volleyball team. "We walk out of here with a loss. We need to executive our game plan better and we need to be more focused on our game." Despite the opening setback in Pool E, Blanton and Nygaard still have a chance to advance to the 16-team elimination round with two more preliminary matches remaining starting with a match on Monday against John Child and Mark Heese, who lost 28-26 and 21-18 to Patrick Heuscher and Stefan Kobel of Switzerland Saturday afternoon. Dax Holdren and Stein Metzger, who finished behind Blanton and Nygaard on the USA Olympic qualifying list, play their first Pool A men's match of the competition Sunday against Andrew Schacht and Joshua Slack of Australia on Sunday.