This weekend the Australian beach pair Cole Durant and Zachery Schubert will compete in the Queensland Beach Volleyball Open on the Gold Coast, Australia, and the duo is going to play with an old school game plan.
The pair are desperate to represent Australia in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Durant, also known as “Durantula”, decided to think back to the basics with his new partner Schubert. The duo has so far won the NSW Open back in December 2016 and came in 2nd place at the SA Open this January.
Durant’s game plan is to play two-touch as much as possible this upcoming weekend and he wants to start jump setting on the beach. Under new head coach, Victor Anfiloff, the pair is willing to do anything to mix it up and pull out a win to get a men’s team to Tokyo.
In beach volleyball the players get three touches which is the standard bump, set, spike. Durant and Schubert plan on only using two touches which will throw the opposing team off. Two touch volleyball is more difficult but will be more effective if controlled correctly. Therefore, instead of bump, set, spike it will be bump then spike!
In a recent interview with Volleyball Australia, Durant stated that he thinks mixing it up will set him and his partner apart.
“If we try to play classic old school volleyball against the seven-foot faints we will be in trouble,” said Durant. “I believe we need to think out of the box and throw the whole world off.”
Durant and Schubert have set a goal of qualifying for the 2017 Beach Volleyball World Championships in Vienna and plan on achieving that goal by playing in different tournaments in Thailand, Indonesia, and Qatar.
The former crown holders of the Queensland Open, Damien Schumann and Joshua Court, will be there ready to play after recently joining the Volleyball Australia High Performance program.
The Queensland Open starts today Friday, January 27, 2017 at Surfers Paradise and the men’s and women’s final will be held on Sunday.
Leave a Reply