The second stop of the Queensland Beach Volleyball Tour took place this weekend at Surfers Paradise. I so would have wanted to play the first stop in Cairns a couple of weekends ago, but it was just too expensive with flights. So I had to make do with my premiere on the QBVT at the second tour stop.

Australia is similar to Sweden regarding beach volleyball in many ways but so different in many more ways. In Sweden, the Challenger division is the higher one, as here it is the lower, below Premiere division. Everything is based off your ranking/seeding, there is no open division as it is back home where the first 16 teams to sign up gets to play no matter how many ranking points they got. Both divisions are pretty much always played at each tourstop and since there aren’t too many people playing this incredible sport down here, in the country literally consisting of thousands and thousands of beautiful beaches, even with 0 ranking, you will get to play at least Challenger. Some tour stops even have a third and lowest one called Aspiring. Like with the Swedish summer, you collect points from all the tournaments but only the top 3 matters when it comes to the grand finale in April next year. That is reassuring considering how it went this weekend.

Since I am new here, with no ranking, my partner and I ended up in Challenger. All good though. First tournament. Don’t want to lose too big on my first competition here. We started strong in the pool, won the first two games on the best court on the set. And by best, I mean that we got the most wind to play around with, we had the best and closest view of the ocean and all the whales that were present, and we also got to enjoy a slightly leaning court, taking the game to a whole new level. We did win though. The wind was consistent but strong (which it hasn’t been for the past three months, so I haven’t really gotten used to the mindset that is needed to play well in wind, I do remember that I usually live the wind though, so I am confident I will find that soon enough) and definitely interfered in our game. The third game we lost. And that sucked. But it happens! Two wins still felt totally acceptable for us as a brand new team on court.

The quarterfinals were played on Saturday evening (this was a loooong day with two pools sharing each court and all games going to 21 – which is much better than 15 as we usually play in Sweden during pool and quarter). The sun had set, the lights were on but only reached our court halfway. We were blinded, sometimes didn’t even see the ball, had ko reference of how big the court was. It was hard. Yet, we still managed to win the second set really strong. And then we failed miserabely in the third set. We have to learn how to replicate that feeling of focus that we had in the second set somehow because that felt incredible!

Since the semifinals and finals was the day after, we got to sleep in, which was definitely something we needed. I was really tired, but glad that my shoulder managed to go through 4 games without any issues 😊

The event was arranged by Vball in Paradise and I really liked it! It really was a full event, sponsors were there selling things and I got an incredible shirt from NudiCover that I can play in, even when it’s hot and it will cover me from the sun. Amazing!

All in all, I am of course bummed that we didn’t make it past the quarterfinals, but at least the ones we lost against won the whole thing in the end. Really excited to give it a new go in two weeks up in Bundaberg!

Funny thing, our names are Alexandra and Alessandra. I go by Alex and she by Sandra, haha!