This blog was never to happen… buy yeah here you go… Playing beach volleyball ‘’is about sleeping in tents, vans under piers and stars, about taking chances, about failing and failing and failing, over and over again, until you find a single moment to cling on, the one that makes it all worth it, the one that keeps you going, vindicating this failures as necessary lessons’’ Travis Mewhirter.
I’d like to be very clear here, this piece of ‘’no art’’ is my point of view and my perception of things that did happen on golden sands of Brid. This shameless writing and the pictures will bring to you a bit of memories but also some facts, pictures and stats. Blog will consist of three parts released over next ten years:
- Part 1 – Kings of Brid
- Part 2 – Queens of Brid
- Part 3 – Meet the Insane Beach Lovers
KINGS OF BRID
2020 and Covid-19 or year that never kicked off…. We were all getting ready to start our traditional preseason trainings consisting of two – three meetings a week in Brid with clear purpose to bring us into standard for playing with a good effect at the UK Beach Tour.
Getting Skyball Team players hot and ready for the season 2020 but also managing Yorkshire Series, Grand Slam Bridlington it was my goal, objective, my every year pathway and summer journey.
Instead we found ourselves in times of deadly pandemic and our dreams for the season faded away – although some teams still managed to play this crazy summer at closed events in London, personally I see this year as competition (no training) write off. These unpresented circumstances supported me in deciding to use this time to reflect and bring to you the past five years of Yorkshire Series, eight years of two-a-side BridBeach, our own King of the Beach invitational and the biggie – The Grand Slam Bridlington.
This blog is a travel in time, beach stories, numbers and players that we call Kings of Brid -the semi-professional athletes who sacrificed time, money, family life, life occupations to succeed, prove to themselves and others that all what’s count is ‘winning by all possible means’ but also getting better as an athlete and person… even if feeling of winning was just for a minute and money you earn was maybe £150 but the ‘real deal’ was to do that in front of 150-200 people watching, spectating and screaming your name and that was a moment when you succeeded and you felt like your name is never to be forgotten…
Beginnings and Brid Beach…
It all begun in 2010 – first Brid Beach… 400 players and Adam M. from York Volleyball Club taking a gold with Piotrek in two a side ultimate knock out competition. I watched this final game after being eliminated in round two and I knew that this is it – like a ‘’light bulb moment’’ and new life objective a goal. I’ll come back here, and I will win this one day. ‘’This is my game’’ Pete M.
The regular camping, playing beach emerged effectively from 2011 – our ethos was ‘’play all day, camp and party at the night’’ – pretty much every weekend was filled up with a beach volley action. We didn’t have to wait long for the results, 2011 Whitby Open Beach Fest it was home affair Adam/Piotrek beating Pete and Jiri in the final.
2012 – 2015 regular training and weekends at Brid continues. More indoor volleyball friends and players join Pete and Adam… Slawek, Michal, Arek, Kupens, Dinos, Tomas, Bartus , Bartek from Liverpool, Robert, Pascal, Jozef and many more …. Monthly training also started in Loughborough with Sebastian, Kuba and Dawid.. These four seasons its pure dominance in local beach volleyball scene including Brid Beach two a side, Tynemouth (played once win once with all Kings final).
| Brid Beach | |
| Years | Winners |
| 2010 | Adam Meszczynski/Piotr |
| 2011 | Thomas Ward/Neil White |
| 2012 | Adam Meszczynski /Damian Imshoot |
| 2013 | Adam Meszczynski/Adam Kupka |
| 2014 | Adam Meszczynski/Adam Kupka |
| 2015 | Arek Herod/Michal Feterlich |
| 2016 | Piotr Makowski/Tomas Laba |
| 2017 | Arek Herod/Bartosz Baran |
| 2018 | Pitt James/Mohammad Basha |
VEBT– Kings or no Kings…
2014 the year that we all got wild cards at the VEBT Skegness, here we came to play at the National Tour. We all packed up and off we went to some shitty caravan park on outside of this used to be a great coast town… Hopes were truly big, first time at the nationals, an elite beach volleyball competition. The reality kicked in very quickly exposing our level in battles against best beach athletes in UK… Double elimination or Brazilian system and after two matches almost all Kings were ready to pack their belongings and drive back up North.
There was something special though about Skegness and it was a silver medal for Kuba and Dawid – Loughborough Bound – we all stayed an supported our boys which I’m sure it helped them to reach that fantastic result. Those boys trained with us so we knew that we have potential to successfully compete at the national level but we needed a clear pathway, more opportunities to play at the competitive level not only once a year at BridBeach or other occasional events in Redcar, Whitby, Tynemouth but foremost we needed a proper beach training including attending at the international camps alongside UK top beach athletes…
Yorkshire Series
The answer to our defeats at Skeggy comes year later in 2015… ‘’Yorkshire Series is the 2-a-side beach volleyball competition initiated by a group of friends from Leeds VC Penny and Dave Speers and York VC Pete and Marz who saw it was good, important and wanted. We took this idea to the next level introducing for the first time a series of 4 events in 2015. In 2016 YS was recognized by Volleyball England and the players were awarded national ranking points for their achievements, 2017 saw YS came into partnership with Active Coast from East Riding of Yorkshire to further promote and grow the sport on the East Coast. Now YS are integral part of new founded in 2018 Skyball Beach Volleyball Club and well establish beach ball event on UKBT tour calendar. Rest is the history.’’ This is quick summary of Yorkshire Series by Marzena my comrade/wife someone who devoted a lot in this big almost lifetime project of bringing beach volleyball and one day dominate the whole of the beach scene in UK.
Yorkshire Series for the last five years continuously proved to be a tremendous battlefield in showcasing which team is best in the North of England. Over those years we ran single gender tournaments but also invitational King and Queen style extravaganza, the events that brought some of the best plays Bridlington and North East beaches have ever seen. Epic battles, sweat, tears, blood and sand …
I consider myself as beach athlete, beach coach, beach father and husband, event organiser I would like to choose these top three finals of Yorkshire Series from the past 5 years. So let’s start with the third:
3) Makowski/Kupka – Bukowski/Bakowski 1-2 (21-12/19-21/16-18) – it’s all part of my painful YS history of the finals as a beach athlete – I think this one was the closets one with good 15 people crowd watching it. I won’t blame cramps we should take this one in straight two sets.
2) Bukowski/Herczeg – Garcia-Kidd/Neveykin 1-2 – this was like watching Grand Slam final. Mark brought a spectacular plays and response from Northern pair was astonishing, but it wasn’t enough to beat Weymouth 2014 winner.
1) Skora/Kupka – Meszczynski/Bakowski 2-1 (21-12/17-21/15-13) – top quality beach volleyball match and great come back by Kupka and Skora. I’m pretty sure that pair Meszczynski/Bakowski lost this one due to fatigue and cramps which got much worse in the final – remember that up North we always play full matches so sometimes it takes 5 long games before you even reach the final. In this occasion final losers faced Bukowski/Modestas in extreme almost murdering three setter semi-final – nevertheless Dawid and Adam played some of the best beach volleyball I have seen during these years.
| Yorkshire Series | |||
| Year | Series | Winners | Runners Up |
| 2015 | I | Meszczynski/Bakowski | Herczeg/Neubrandt |
| 2015 | II | Meszczynski/Bakowski | Feterlich/Herod |
| 2015 | III | Herczeg/Berndt | Meszczynski/Bakowski |
| 2015 | IV | Feterlich/Herod | Makowski/Meszczynski |
| 2016 | I | Meszczynski/Bakowski | Kupka/Herod |
| 2016 | II | Meszczynski/Bakowski | Herczeg/Anderson |
| 2016 | III | Kupka/Kammer | Smelovs/Ivanovs |
| 2016 | IV | Bukowski/Modestas | Makowski/Bakowski |
| 2017 | I | Meszczynski/Kupka | Smelovs/Ivanovs |
| 2017 | II | Kupka/Skora | Meszczynski/Bakowski |
| 2017 | III | Bukowski/Bakowski | Makowski/Kupka |
| 2017 | IV | Bukowski/Meszczynski | Makowski/Kupka |
| 2018 | I | Sheaf/Garcia-Kid | Meszczynski/Sobieracki |
| 2018 | II | Garcia-Kid/Neveykin | Bukowski/Herczeg |
| 2019 | I | Meszczynski/Sobieracki | Makowski/Kammer |
| 2019 | II | Bukowski/Meszczynski | Makowski/Gega |
| 2019 | III | Feterlich/Kammer | Bakowski/Makin |
| Invitational King of the Brid Beach | |
| Year | King |
| 2016 | Adam Meszczynski |
| 2017 | Ignemars Ivanonvs |
Skyball BVC/Active Coast/Ollie and Ben
2018 new born club, baby Sky and juniors beach training starts showing up future hopes.
Jitka, Said jumped on board with the idea of creation of the Beach Volleyball Club in December of 2017. Marz and Pete loved the idea of putting existing tournaments, training camps and training days into more professional outlook where we could start effectively developing new players, bring Skyball juniors team that would eventually dominate the beach scene up North and further, promote the beach game to everyone no matter the level and get the best of beach to our home.
On the picture below Skyball BVC is officially open and day is celebrated with my closets beach volleyball family and our friends partners Active Coast.
Grand Slam Brid
Volleyball England couldn’t deliver VEBT after 2016 due to lack of funding and the new UKBT era emerged. Skyball BVC and myself had always a dream of hosting a high performance beach volleyball event in UK.
Bridlington Grand Slams 2018 and 2019 were fully powered by Active Coast, Richies Café and Skyball BVC delivered with UKBT cooperation. Those events were epic and truly amazing tournaments showcasing best beach athletes from UK and beyond. Every Grand Slam brought spectators and best beach players from UK and beyond this would include Issa Batrane, Javier Bello, Jake Sheaf, Phil Smith, Mark Garcia-Kid, Arnaud Loisou (France), Sam Dunbavin and many more. I found delivering and running Brid Grand Slams very special, powerful but also challenging and rewarding. I would never be able to get these huge and expensive events going without my wife, my beach family, Adam, Paul from Active Coast and Jake from UKBT – ‘’The best is yet to come, and won’t that be fine? You think you’ve seen the sun, but you ain’t seen it shine’’ – Frank Sinatra.
Bridlington Grand Slams were particularly successful for Queens of Brid (more on this in the next chapter) but Kings had they say too with bronze medal by Meszczynski/Sobieracki in 2019 and Westfal/Gega reaching quarters in 2018…
| Grand Slam Bridlington | ||
| Year | Winners | Runners Up |
| 2018 | Sheaf/Smith | Bello/Batrane |
| 2019 | Louiseou/Batrane | Garcia-Kid/Smith |
The first part of my blog I dedicate to Dave Speers, Jozef Pecovsky, Said Lopez, John Howard and Adam Meszczynski our own YS/Skyball franchise.
To be continued…