by Wojtek
(Bogatynia, Poland)
The longest beach volleyball match took place in Goerlizt (town on the Polish-German border). Poland was represented by team B (I and Tomek both are Polish) and Germany was represented by team A (Sebastian from Germany and Mateusz from Poland).
It was great challenging because we had to play at least 25 hours that thought was terrifying. Throughout the match we were able to rest only on time-out (30 seconds) between sets (1 minute) and an additional 5 minutes after every hour of playing.
The match started at 9 o’clock on July 3rd. Before starting the match, was a warm-up (stretching, passing, attack, serve etc) and then began the match, just we started to play and so for the next 25 hours:) During the match, it turned out that fatigue was not our worst enemy, much worse was the weather. That day was “beautiful” it was 37 degrees Celsius in the shade and on the court… I don’t know, I remember only that it was very hot. Another difficult obstacle was night, we were tired after a long day of playing and hard burned by the sun. We were cold and wanted us to sleep and mosquitoes were biting viciously. Each of us had huge crisis but did not give up, because we knew that when one of us retires, it would be the end of everyone’s opportunity. This thought was giving us the strength we needed.
On Sunday morning, we were greeted with sun and heat, which completely took away our desire to play. We wanted to give up already but fans began to strongly support us, and the last two hours we played for them.
When announced end of match, fans ran onto the court and poured on us all the water that we used for cooling. We were very tired and happy, that we succeeded. This was an amazing feeling.
I would like to thank all the fans who supported us, the organizers and the rest of players, without whom I would not have reached my goal. Thank you…
From Kevin at www.volleyball-training-ground.com: Wow! That is an amazing story! What an accomplishment. That is quite the feat to have played for as long as you did. It takes a tremendous amount of determination and willpower to do what you have done. That is a great story and thank you for sharing it!
