Canberra, Australia, May 11, 2015 – Damien Schumann admits he and playing partner Josh Court “felt a bit flat” after the opening Beach Volleyball World Tour event in Fuzhou, China, last month.
The Melbourne-based pair failed to make it past qualifying, a major disappointment for a team looking forward to making a major impression at this year’s Beach Volleyball World Championships.
They’ll get a chance to bounce back this week, when they contest the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Lucerne Open 2015 in Switzerland. Brisbane’s Mowen sisters, Jordan and Justine, will compete in the women’s draw, but both teams will have to win their way through qualifying.
“Whenever you don’t play your best you feel a bit flat,” Schumann said from Switzerland this week. “While the teams we played (in Fuzhou) both played really well, we made some errors at crucial times when sets were up for grabs.”
The test for him and Court, he said, was how they dealt with the disappointment.
“You can get really down in the dumps and sulky about it, which can definitely happen on the road, or you can use it positively,” he said. “To be honest, the two losses we had really highlighted some things in our game that we can definitely improve on.”
In their preparation for Lucerne, Jordan and Justine Mowen spent a week in Montpellier, France, with their rugby-playing brother, former Wallabies captain, Ben.
“Fortunately for us the main centre for the French volleyball teams is there as well,” Jordan Mowen said. “We trained twice a day most days for a week with two French teams and a Finnish team. It was a very competitive week, and was great having quality teams to train against for a decent amount of time. We train predominantly by ourselves back in Brisbane, as there’s no other senior women’s team in Queensland trying to play internationally at the moment.”
Like Schumann and Court, the Mowen sisters don’t relish having to fight their way into a tournament through qualifying.
“It is very nerve wracking and brutal to play qualifiers as you don’t get any second chances, and a lot of the time you’re playing teams that you’ve never seen before,” she said. “You don’t have the luxury of taking your time to get into the match, or taking too long to work out the game plan that you’ll need to win it. But I do believe that teams who go through the qualifiers and then into the main draw do quite well, as they know what it’s like to play with no second chances and they start their pool matches quite well.”
Schumann and Court have also spent time in Europe preparing for Lucerne. And not only did they spend 10 days in Switzerland, Schumann got a chance to spend some court time with one of his boyhood heroes.
“The last ten days in Switzerland have been great,” he said. “We have been able to train with no pressure or being tired from work, which has been really amazing. The last couple of days we got to train with Marcio Araujo from Brazil, which was awesome. Especially as he was someone I loved to watch growing up.”
The Lucerne World Tour event begins Tuesday evening, Australian time, and runs through Sunday.