2015-11-19 14:45:00 CEST
Namibia is aiming high in beach volleyball and putting in place plans to ensure that in the years to come they will be among the leading African sites and eventually compete at the Swatch Major Series as well.
Kim Seebach is one of Namibia's up and coming players; Photo credit: FIVB
In recent years, Namibian teams have competed at various FIVB age-group world championships and the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games while their leading women’s team narrowly missed out on a place at the Netherlands 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships.
The drive for improvement is being led by James Verrinder who is the Volleyball Director of the Namibian Volleyball Federation and runs the Timeout Beach Volleyball Academy.
Verrinder originally comes from Cambridge in England and used to play Division 1 volleyball in the English league and on the English Beach Volleyball Tour. He met his Namibian wife at university while playing volleyball and has spent the past three years living in her home country, becoming accustomed to the unique challenges that come with promoting beach volleyball in the southern African country during this time.
“Logistically it is incredibly difficult,” Verrinder said. “We have a population of between 2 and 2.5 million people in the country with about 300,000 living in the capital Windhoek. It takes about eight hours to drive from there to the North of Namibia and there are about one million potential athletes there who we need to reach and expose to beach volleyball.
“We have one club in the whole of Namibia which plays beach volleyball regularly and trains together. We really want to establish a few more clubs and get a few more peopleinterested in playing beach volleyball and try to enlarge the pool of athletes so that we have a bit more choices when we choose our international athletes.”
Namibia’s unique challenge emerges when children reach the age of 18 and leave for either Germany or South Africa in order to attend university. This means that many of these are lost to the system and the sport as they establish their own lives overseas. One such player is Julia Laggner who competed at two FIVB U21 World Championships and is now benefitting from playing on the German National Tour while studying at university. Other players likely to be in a similar position in the next few years are Kim Seebach and Stephanie Palmhert, who competed in the 2014 U19 World Championships and Nanjing 2014.
Verrinder is confident that they will compete in the 2016 U21 World Championships, along with the Pfeifer twins Daniel and Fabian.
“Wherever they are in the world, as long as they keep exposing themselves to beach volleyball then hopefully we can call on them when we need them and they can act as role models for the next generation,” Verrinder sad.
The next big challenge for Namibian beach volleyball will come at the CAVB Continental Cup Final in 2016.
“Beach volleyball is such a new sport to all African countries but from going to the CAVB competitions you can see in six months how dramatic the improvement is among African countries,” he said
The Swatch Major Series can’t wait to finally host a team from Namibia or the African continent. The world is full of incredible talents and the tour stops of the Swatch Major Series are the perfect stages to host the diversity the world has in store.