Professional Seashore
April 17, 2024
HERMOSA BEACH, California — Within the spring of 2015, Mathias Berntsen and Anders Mol, cousins united by blood as a lot by a hereditary ardour for the game of volleyball, sat down and mapped out the longer term.
There was a lot to debate.
The members of Norway’s senior nationwide workforce on the time have been ageing out. After the 2016 Olympic Video games, the way forward for their nation’s success would fall on the shoulders of a handful of unproven youngsters, in a federation with little infrastructure and a resume not lengthy with success.
“We sat down and stated now we have to do one thing,” Berntsen stated. “We didn’t have a system so we stated now we have to do it ourselves. What can we deliver to the world that makes it cool to observe the model? We sat down and mentioned every thing.”
As a result of they have been nonetheless in highschool, the primary precedence was, in fact, the identify. What ought to they name themselves? They tinkered with all issues Norway — the fjords, the mountains, the nation’s historical past. After a pair hours of kicking names forwards and backwards, they settled on one thing a bit of extra becoming for a mascot: vikings.
From right here on out, Anders Mol, Mathias Berntsen and the remainder of the fledgling Norwegian seashore volleyball gamers can be Christened the Seashore Volley Vikings.
An excellent identify.
A robust identify.
Nevertheless it was additionally only a identify. Issues little if there isn’t a success to again it up, no motive to know that identify within the first place. So as soon as the matter of the moniker was settled, they turned to a extra audacious subject, one which didn’t take a number of hours to resolve: What did they need to accomplish?
Simple: A gold medal on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“We set the aim in 2015. Me and Anders sat down and stated certainly one of us goes for gold in Tokyo,” Berntsen stated on SANDCAST: Seashore Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “We simply stated we have to do one thing ourselves right here and we put all of our financial savings in, our dad and mom put in some huge cash, we put all of it on one card which was to make it to Tokyo. In 5 years’ time, we could have a workforce that was going to win the Olympics.”
It’s straightforward to look again now and see it as borderline apparent. Anders and Christian Sorum have been the very best workforce on the planet since 2018 and have a reliable argument as one of many best of all time, even at simply 26 and 28 years outdated, respectively.
However in 2015? Such ambitions have been nonetheless the stuff of highschool goals — lofty, grandiose, drifting into the realm of quixotic.
Given its ardour for winter sports activities and its proclivity for achievement throughout the Winter Olympic Video games, Norway has a surprisingly wealthy seashore volleyball tradition. For 15 years, from 1999 to 2015, it hosted one of the widespread occasions within the sport, a serious in Stavanger that awarded its winners the famed Stavanger Sword. The primary Olympics to function seashore volleyball as a sport, the 1996 Atlanta Video games, boasted two Norwegian groups who completed within the top-10: Jan Kvalheim and Bjorn Maaseide (they completed seventh) and Ragni Hestad and Merita Berntsen, the matriarch of the Mol household who was coached by — guess who? — Kare Mol, father of Anders and Hendrik Mol and up-and-coming Markus Mol.
“There was form of a tradition for seashore volleyball in Norway as a result of our greatest athletes didn’t go for indoor. We don’t have sufficient gamers for an indoor workforce so if you wish to make an Olympics, you need to go the seashore route,” stated Hendrik, who at 30 is the eldest of the Mol siblings. “We have been fortunate to have the event in Stavanger for a few years. We acquired to see the event rising up, we stated ‘Wow, we need to do that. That is sick.’ That’s the place we acquired our first impressions of seashore volleyball as a sport. With out this event, none of us would need to do that professionally, to do that dream.”
To dream the dream is one factor.
To see it come to fruition is one other.
Berntsen has photograph proof of simply how far he and Anders needed to go to make their prophetic gold in Tokyo occur. In 2014, when Anders was simply 15 years outdated and Berntsen 17, they acquired a wild card into the Stavanger Grand Slam. Within the first spherical of pool play, they matched up with Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal. Their upset bid acquired off to a rip-roaring begin. Taking part in among the greatest volleyball of their lives.
They led 2-0.
Somebody snapped a photograph of the scoreboard.
“I nonetheless have that image,” Berntsen stated, laughing. “It’s humorous, you play your idol at such a younger age and now you’re the very best of the very best. It’s cool to see.”
Berntsen can’t assist however marvel what might need occurred had he and Anders caught collectively. In 2016, a 12 months after mapping out the grandest of plans, he and Anders certified for a satellite tv for pc occasion in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, their first main most important draw as a workforce with out requiring a wild card.
“Me and Anders have been the juniors arising,” Berntsen stated. However the next week, Anders was signed as much as play the Klagenfurt Main with Christian Sorum, probably the most skilled member of the Norwegian youth making their manner by way of the rankings. They’d by no means earlier than performed a event collectively, so there was no actual motive to suppose a lot of it.
Till they made historical past.
They certified and went on a Cinderella run for the ages, gorgeous Russia’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Konstantin Semenov, Brazil’s Vitor Felipe and Alvaro Filho, Tri Bourne and John Hyden, and practically authored one other over Canadians Chaim Schalk and Ben Saxton, ending fifth in one of many greatest occasions on the seashore volleyball calendar.
“A workforce from Norway?” Bourne remembered considering of that loss. “Why would you be good at seashore volleyball?”
Even Berntsen and Hendrik are left struggling to discover a cheap clarification for the unreasonable success of Anders and Sorum.
“It’s a wierd factor,” Berntsen stated. “They clicked immediately.”
“It’s not one thing you possibly can educate,” Hendrik stated.
It was all however determined, then, that Anders and Sorum can be one of many Norwegian pairs trying to meet the aim Berntsen and Anders had penned out in 2015, to win a gold in Tokyo. This left Berntsen seeking a accomplice. No drawback. He didn’t even need to discover exterior of the household tree to seek out one. Hendrik Mol, Berntsen’s cousin, was gifted, bodily gifted, promising, and in addition in want of a defender.
However there was a slight subject.
Hendrik might barely see.
Hendrik Mol, and a “huge battle gained”
To a teenage child in Norway within the early 2000s, enjoying volleyball in Hawaii was akin to most of us getting a letter from Hogwarts, strolling by way of a wardrobe into Narnia, opening a chocolate bar and discovering a golden ticket.
It’s a fantasy. Enjoyable to consider. Implausible to do.
Till, sooner or later at a membership event in Canada, you meet a child your age who’s dedicated to play volleyball for the College of Hawaii, a child whose expertise is barely superior however principally matches your individual.
“I used to be like ‘Wait, you are able to do that?’ ” Hendrik stated, laughing.
Nonetheless, the possibilities have been slim. Perhaps not as slim as a letter from Hogwarts, however Hendrik was getting into his senior 12 months at Norway’s TopVolley. Most universities would have their rosters stuffed out by then, recruiting juniors or sophomores, not seniors. There are, in fact, worse locations for Hawaii coach Charlie Wade to go to than the talent-rich pipeline that’s ToppVolley. So when Hendrik despatched a spotlight reel to the Hawaii employees, Wade wasted little time in popping out to observe him play.
When Wade supplied him a spot on the roster, Hendrik had just one query: The place do I signal?
“It was form of out of nowhere,” Hendrik stated. “That’s not one thing that’s regular, which you can get on a workforce as a senior in highschool. I used to be actually fortunate and I began that journey and it was wonderful. I used to be actually fortunate to play there.”
He slowly built-in himself into the lineup, seeing time as a freshman, beginning one match as a sophomore, serving to Hawaii to certainly one of its higher seasons, a 19-3 begin earlier than a back-to-back at UCLA.
“I had a great recreation,” Hendrik stated. “I used to be beginning to really feel robust, I felt actually good.”
They gained each, pushing their document to 21-3. When Hendrik wakened the subsequent day, again on Oahu, he had pink eye. Not an emergency. He’d had it earlier than, knew the same old routine. He picked up some eye drops, dripped a couple of in, and forgot about it.
When he wakened the subsequent morning, he couldn’t see.
“Full darkness,” he stated. “The attention was glued shut with the identical pink eye. I pried it open and I couldn’t look out of it.”
Together with his functioning eye, he might see that the opposite was fully white. No pupils. Nothing.
“It was scary,” he stated. And delicate. It harm to stroll exterior. Damage worse to go from knowledgeable to knowledgeable with no solutions. No physician might determine it out, and amidst that confusion, all of them supplied the identical, flawed reply: strive some extra eye drops. To the purpose that Hendrik was dropping in liquid each half-hour, some as costly as $500 a bottle.
“The craziest medicine,” he stated. “I took all of it.”
And when he didn’t, the darkness returned. With no medical skilled on the Islands capable of present a solution, he flew again to UCLA, doing one weird take a look at after the subsequent, discovering, after a couple of days, that it was a bacterial an infection uncommon and obscure sufficient that Hendrik doesn’t even keep in mind the identify. What he did know is that his imaginative and prescient would by no means totally return, to what he now estimates at about 20 p.c of what it was.
“I didn’t know if I might even play correctly once more,” he stated. “I used to be an out of doors hitter and an reverse and I wanted to move and the way in which guys serve in indoor, it’s laborious to do you probably have restricted imaginative and prescient.”
He missed the rest of his sophomore 2015 season, returning house to Norway the place he’d relearn easy methods to play the sport on the setting that raised him: the seashore.
“I relearned easy methods to do stuff with seashore as a result of it’s slower than indoor,” he stated. “I began to regain confidence in my recreation.”
For some time at Hawaii, Hendrik needed to put on a watch patch, and since he wasn’t enjoying, he didn’t have to stick to the strict guidelines forbidding facial hair. He grew his beard lengthy. Lifted heavier and heavier weights. With that eye patch, swollen muscle groups, and a protracted beard, Hendrik started to resemble one thing of a viking himself.
“The boys cherished,” he stated, laughing. “I appeared badass.”
After which he exchanged his eye patch for clunky, outsized goggles, and the badassery was gone. If he couldn’t look badass, then, he’d merely construct it one other manner. He figured that whereas it’s awfully inconvenient to lose 80 p.c of your imaginative and prescient, the restoration was truly little greater than a basic math drawback.
“If I’ve 80 p.c much less imaginative and prescient, can I get 20 p.c stronger?” he stated. “Twenty p.c smarter?”
He hit the seashore and weights that summer season, and it paid off instantly, imaginative and prescient be damned. Now stronger, with the next vertical and hits that sizzled a great deal tougher, shifting with extra explosiveness and fluidity, he began each match as a junior, switching to center blocker. The following 12 months, he began all 32 matches, completed No. 15 within the nation in blocks per set, led the workforce in hitting share, and was named All-American.
“That,” he stated, “was an enormous battle gained.”
It was solely the primary.
“We have been conscious it’s not regular to try this.”
Many shall be shocked by the story of Hendrik Mol’s eyesight, or lackthereof. On the floor, it doesn’t appear to have restricted him in any manner. When he and Mathias Berntsen started enjoying full-time on the FIVB — now Volleyball World Seashore Professional Tour — they slowly labored their manner up the rankings, making the occasional top-10 in a three-star event, upsetting groups right here, absorbing setbacks there. It was a really regular studying curve, although one made to look as if there have been no curve in any respect when being in comparison with the meteoric moonshot of Anders Mol and Christian Sorum.
Within the span of a month bridging July and August of 2018, Anders and Sorum gained majors in Gstaad, Vienna, and Hamburg, raking in additional than $200,000 as a workforce, flying up the world rankings quicker than any workforce in current reminiscence, presumably quicker than any in historical past.
“Their rise went quick,” Hendrik stated. “They’d the abilities, the query was simply confidence, and that’s one thing you need to construct by beating good groups. We had a extra regular studying curve. Often whenever you get to your 30s that’s whenever you start peaking. Anders and Christian had a freak curve to the highest however we’ve been steadily making progress as a workforce and so long as you’re making progress it’s lots of enjoyable to play this recreation.
“We have been conscious it’s not regular to try this. I’ve by no means seen one other workforce try this.”
They plugged away, partly obscured by the large shadow solid by Anders and Sorum, although the identical may very well be stated for each different workforce on the planet. Fifths in Turkey and Edmonton, a most important draw on the 2019 World Tour Finals in Rome, one other fifth on the 2020 European Championships — all development. Whereas it was unlikely for Hendrik and Berntsen to qualify, through factors, for the Tokyo Olympics — which had been moved to 2021 as a consequence of COVID-19 — it was nonetheless attainable to take action by way of the Continental Cup, the competitors course of by which a European federation is granted an Olympic berth.
In Could of 2021, Hendrik and Berntsen have been set to journey from their coaching camp within the Canary Islands to Madrid, which was internet hosting that section of the Continental Cup. On the time, unfavorable COVID assessments have been nonetheless required to journey. This wasn’t an issue, as not one of the Norwegians have been sick or exhibiting any indicators of it.
Till Anders examined optimistic.
As shut contacts, this restricted Hendrik and Berntsen from touring as properly. They contacted medical employees in Norway, asking if it may very well be a false optimistic, if maybe Anders ought to take a look at once more.
They have been advised false positives didn’t exist. Inconceivable. Anders had COVID. That was that. Anders thought in any other case, taking a follow-up take a look at the subsequent morning, a take a look at that confirmed he was unfavorable.
Too late.
They’d already been pulled from the event.
Had Anders re-tested that evening, they’d have had time to journey.
“If we had acted quick, we might have competed,” Hendrik wrote on social media afterwards. “I spent ages getting ready for that event, but I didn’t ask for a second opinion? I couldn’t consider myself.”
Subs have been known as in on the final minute to switch Hendrik and Berntsen and Anders and Sorum. Admirable although their effort was, they misplaced, dropping the potential of a second Olympic bid with them.
“Devastatingly unfair,” is how Hendrik described it then.
But, like many excessive performers, he didn’t let a great drawback go to waste. He allowed it to reshape how he considered sports activities and, by extension, the world.
“Success,” he wrote, “is a fruits of expertise, laborious work, and a sure reliance on the situations that may allow all of it to occur. One must be ready for that. Accidents will occur. Professional sports activities is unforgiving and unsure. There are belongings you can not management in life and that’s OK. Focus no what you possibly can management and let go of the rest. Discover different issues in life that matter, that’ll complement your well-being. Don’t let your sport solely outline you as a human being.
“On the finish of all of it, I notice that I’m wholesome, I’ve been blessed with a robust and supportive household and I’m fortunate to reside in a rustic of alternative. There are far worse locations on the planet to be proper now. At this very second, I’ve determined to by no means give a f*** concerning the Olympic Video games ever once more. As an alternative, I’ll work on stabilizing my degree of play in order that I can have extra enjoyable these 4 years in between.”
Humorous factor, what occurred subsequent. You possibly can in all probability guess.
Hendrik Mol and Mathias Berntsen started enjoying the very best volleyball of their lives.
In 2022, for the primary time in historical past, two Norwegian groups competed within the World Championships. Two occasions later, Hendrik and Berntsen made their first ultimate, profitable silver in a Problem in Agadir, Morocco. They’d shut the season on back-to-back fifths in Elite16s. Two extra medals discovered their manner again to Norway in 2023 — bronze in Itapema, silver in Edmonton.
“These COVID years we have been compelled to coach with Anders and Christian so much and I feel we realized so much over that time period,” Hendrik stated. “We had a great season in 2019 nevertheless it’s like we hit the publish in soccer and it goes out as a substitute of getting in. However 2022, we began getting confidence. Whenever you begin beating groups who’re good, there are such a lot of video games that go 15-13, and whenever you begin making it 15-13 versus 13-15, that’s the largest change within the confidence.”
They’re at the moment ranked No. 30 on the planet, No. 26 within the Olympic rankings. If the Olympics have been to occur right now, they’d be the final workforce in. However keep in mind: Hendrik doesn’t give a f*** about that. Many say it however don’t imply it. Hendrik means it, all the way down to his very core. He cares, sure. However now not is it every thing to him. Such is the angle of a person who practically misplaced his sight, who has seen the load of an Olympic gold carried by his personal brother.
There isn’t any denying that it was a monumental achievement when Anders and Sorum gained gold in Tokyo, placing a beautiful exclamation level on the dream Anders and Berntsen drew up as excessive schoolers in 2015. There isn’t any denying it’s the pinnacle of feat in seashore volleyball. No denying it’s a stunning story, Norway — Norway! — profitable an Olympic gold in seashore volleyball.
It is usually a little bit of a façade.
Within the wake of Anders and Sorum profitable gold, when the cash must be pouring in, the media tour in full pressure, the eye lavished upon the game’s golden boys, the Norwegian federation misplaced 4 sponsors.
“It was a bizarre feeling for our workforce after the Olympics,” Hendrik stated.
The favored Seashore Volley Vikings social media accounts slowed to a crawl. An odd lethargy set in, the invoice for the burnout, of pushing and pushing and pushing for six years, coming due, with curiosity.
“Lots of people in our sport are very geared to the Olympics and it doesn’t final that lengthy, it’s simply three weeks of pleasure, enjoyable to be part of,” Hendrik stated. “It’s turn out to be a label and it’s nearly too huge of a factor for athletes in our sport. For me, it took the main focus away from having enjoyable, enjoying and having fun with the game and being younger and having a physique that works properly. These small issues are those that you simply encounter probably the most and it must be cherished so much too. If it seems you’re that good and also you do these little issues so properly that you simply make the Olympics, so be it, that’s cool, it’s a pleasant spotlight however if you happen to undergo for these 4 years main as much as it, that’s horrible, what’s the purpose?”
The purpose is to be these highschool children in 2015, speaking about fjords and mountains and vikings and legends of Norway’s previous and the way they might meld it with seashore volleyball. It’s dreaming, and seeing, tasting, touching these goals. It’s touring the world, enjoying a recreation on the sand. It’s discovering a brand new breakfast burrito spot in Hermosa Seashore, a coach who makes songs on the highway. It’s the in-between that Hendrik and Berntsen know is the true coronary heart and soul of the sport, not the three-week Olympic pedestal upon which it’s thrust each 4 years.
“I might go on a ship in Norway and fish for 3 months and make shit tons of cash however we love seashore volleyball,” Berntsen stated. “Now we have ardour for it and it’s a pleasant life-style.”
