Scottish History Made As Coutts/Beattie Gets Country’s First Ever Beach Win

2017 FIVB SYDNEY EVENT

• March 16th-18th, 2017
• Two-Star Event
• Women’s Only
• Manly Beach, Sydney, Australia
• Tournament home page
• Schedule/results
• Live Video

Scottish pair Lynn Beattie and Melissa Coutts made history on Friday in Sydney at the 2-star stop of the FIVB World Beach Volleyball Tour in Sydney, Australia. In their opening game of the tournament, Beattie/Coutts knocked off locals Sarah Battaglene/Stefanie Weiler 2-1 (20-22, 21-16, 15-9) to mark Scotland’s first-ever win in the tour’s history.

Perhaps aided by the dreary, rainy, windy weather this week in Sydney, that is more reminiscent of the final days of Scottish winter than the closing days of Australian summer, the pair are scheduled to play again on Saturday morning local time, weather permitting, against another pair of Australians Bell/Palmer in the single-elimination (with 8 byes) format’s round of 16.

The 31-year old Beattie has never made an appearance in an FIVB event before, though she has played at the European level, while the 46-year old Coutts hasn’t played on the FIVB tour since 1999 – 18 years ago. According to BVBinfo.com, their combined career earnings is somewhere in the range of $3300 USD. By simply winning their first-round game on Thursday, they’ve assured themselves of a minimum of $1,700 USD to split among themselves, while another win would jump them up to $2,250.

Prize Money (Per Team):

• 1st – $6,000
• 2nd – $4,500
• 3rd – $3,700
• 4th – $2,800
• 5th – $2,250
• 9th (8 teams) – $1,700
• 17th (8 teams) – $1,300

Scotland sits in a bit of a limbo athletically (all referendum commentary aside). On most international levels, they compete as a part of the whole United Kingdom team. In some competitions, however, like soccer’s World Cup or the Commonwealth Games, they compete as an independent nation (as do England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and several other UK political subsets).

Scotland has been largely part of the group in volleyball, but organizers of the 2018 Commonwealth Games (which will be in Australia) have announced that they will add beach volleyball as one of their option events, which means that Scotland suddenly has to identify their top beach pairs.

Coutts and Beattie made their first big pitch for those spots (and the funding that could come with it) with the win. In this regard, they’ve also assured themselves of at least 60 FIVB World Rankings points – 20 more than they got just for entering.