Volleyball set to steal limelight

Beach volleyball has always been one of the biggest crowd-pullers at any beach sports events and the narrative will doubtlessly remain the same when the maiden edition of the ANOC World Beach Games Qatar 2019 kicks off in Doha on October 12.

The sport, which gained an Olympic status at the 1996 Atlanta Games, has a massive global following and it has continued to draw capacity crowds wherever it is staged anywhere in the world.

For example, the spectacular beach volleyball stadium for the 2012 London Games had a capacity of 15,000, the largest-ever Olympic beach volleyball venue, and a record 14,500 turned out to watch Russia defeat Brazil 3-2 to clinch the gold medal of the men’s event at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London while the women’s event witnessed a capacity-filled stadium.

The beach volleyball games of the Rio Olympics also recorded an impressive turnouts and it was one of the most attended events of the competition.

Played on a sand court measuring 8m by 8 m per side, beach volleyball is a team sport usually played by two teams of two players each but for Qatar 2019, the competition will feature the 4X4 format which consists of four players from each side.

The 4x4 beach volleyball adapts the rules of the two-a-side beach volleyball discipline with changes in the scoring system, team composition, service order, and the addition of substitution and coaching as its general principles.

As in indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent’s side of the court, and to prevent the same effort by the opponent.

Historically, there are reports of men playing volleyball on the beach in Hawaii as early as 1915 but the history of beach volleyball really began and gained momentum in Santa Monica, California in the 1920’s. It was then and there that the first volleyball courts were put up on the beach and families came to play.

The first two men Beach Volleyball tournament was held in Santa Monica, California in 1948 while the first international FIVB-sanctioned tournament was played on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro in 1987, with a prize purse of US$22,000. It was won by Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos.