Two Roads in Vienna: Swiss Win Euros as Spain Arrives

Already down a set and 7-0 after the first change of ends in the second set of Saturday’s European final, Daniela Álvarez could only laugh when she finally spiked a ball that Switzerland’s Tanja Hüberli couldn’t block and Nina Brunner couldn’t parry.

On this court, she knew. On this day, it wasn’t meant to be.

Vienna belongs to the Brunner and Hüberli. Again. As a result, so does Europe, no small detail a year ahead of an Olympics on European soil.

But the future? Something in that smile suggested Álvarez now knows her day is coming.

Brunner and Hüberli routed Álvarez and Tania Moreno 21-12, 21-13 to win the Beach Volleyball European Championship. In their third consecutive appearance in the final of the annual showcase event, the Swiss pair won their second European title—both in Vienna.

On the same day when Spain eliminated Switzerland from the FIFA Women’s World Cup in a 5-1 shellacking on the other side of the world, what went down on a rainy, grey day in the Austrian capital was no less lopsided. After a pair of epic, three-set semifinals earlier in the day, the Swiss won the final by the most lopsided margin in the entire knockout round (24 matches).

I’m not impartial when it comes to the Swiss. Brunner and Hüberli are my team. They are one of the only sporting entities who results still steer my mood. It just about ruined my summer when they skipped the two North American tour stops in Edmonton and Montreal. The loyalty is born of investment. I’ve followed them almost from their beginning, intrigued by Hüberli’s unassuming demeanor and Brunner’s preternatural rise now more than a decade ago, winning junior world titles at 15 and 16 year old—competing against future Olympians as old as 20.

Seven years. It’s a long time. For some.

Seven years ago, they were a team on the rise, promising but unproven. It felt like a fairytale when they reached the European final in 2018, losing to the Dutch pair of Sanne Keizer and Madelein Meppelink that played the tournament on home soil. Keizer and Meppelink were the veterans, multiple-time Olympians and, in Keizer’s case, a former European champion.

It was still difficult to think of the Swiss as proven contenders by the time the pandemic-delayed Olympics arrived in 2021. They won their pool in Tokyo but lost a heartbreaking round of 16 match against countrywomen Anouk Vergé-Dépré and Joana Mäder. It was a three-set classic played in brutally hot conditions, but no one remembers round of 16 matches. Vergé-Dépré and Mäder went on to win bronze. Brunner and Hüberli went back to the fringes of acclaim.

*Brunner (left) and Hüberli (right) in 2017 when they were 21 and 24, respectively.*

For all of two weeks. Just a fortnight after losing in the Olympics, Brunner and Betschart were crowned European champions in Vienna. They beat the Dutch pair of Katja Stam and Raïsa Schoon in a final that felt like something of a referendum on the young team that had arrived. Or at least the primary challenger to Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova for that label.

Somewhere along the way, Brunner and Hüberli grew up, for lack of a better phrase.

One of the reasons that sports are so compelling is they really do hold up a mirror to the world—for better and, on a day when greed and conference realignment rule the headlines, often for worse. But it’s also a funhouse mirror in some respects. We see competitive lives unfold on fast forward, prospects entering their peaks and slipping into decline and retirement in less time than many of us hold onto a car. I still wear clothes that I had seven years ago. I still sit on the same couch, cook with the same pans.

Seven years isn’t a long time. Except in sports. In sports, it’s half a lifetime.

Saturday, that was inescapable. Brunner and Hüberli aren’t old, by any stretch. So precocious at such a young age, Brunner is still just 27. And even at 30, Hüberli was nearly a decade younger than Germany’s indomitable Laura Ludwig, who along with ridiculously impressive indoor-convert Louisa Lippmann pushed Switzerland to the limit in a 21-19, 19-21, 16-14 semifinal. But if the Swiss aren’t old, they also aren’t young anymore. They’re in the sweet spot.

Anomalies like Ludwig notwithstanding, athletic careers are defined by the intersection of two lines going in opposite directions on a graph. One is experience, wisdom, athletic IQ—a line that rises as years and competitions accumulate. The other line is athleticism—descending as those same years and competitions take a toll on joins, ligaments and various and sundry parts of the body. At some moment, those lines intersect. That might last a summer or it might last several years. It might not even mark the period of your greatest success. But you’re never better equipped to succeed than you are when those lines meet. That’s where the Swiss reside.

*Moreno at the net during tour stop in Edmonton.*

They entered the Euros with no momentum whatsoever. They suffered a profoundly disappointing pool play exit in Gstaad in July, one of the biggest tournaments of the year for every team but all the more for Swiss teams playing on home soil. This week, Hüberli, who has dealt with injuries in recent seasons, could barely even celebrate a pool play win, crumpled on the sand and in need of treatment from trainers.

“Of course we were thinking about medals,” Hüberli said of expectations this week. “But we were also a little bit unsure [because of] the last tournament.”

Brunner echoed the sentiments in her German-language interview (as best I could tell with some translation assistance).

None of it mattered. It didn’t matter because the Swiss long ago learned how to deal with the inevitable setbacks that are part of any sport—the random weeks when luck isn’t on your side you simply play like crap. And Hüberli’s ailment notwithstanding, their bodies are still in good enough condition to push through some wear and tear. Lord knows that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to get out of bed the morning after a tournament. But it’s manageable.

So, the Brunner and Hüberli weren’t troubled when they fell behind 6-1 in the opening set of Friday’s round of 16 match against Spain’s Liliana and Paula. They held off a three-set challenge from rising countrywomen Zoé Vergé-Dépré and Esmée Böbner in a quarterfinal later the same day. They outlasted the Germans. And when Brunner was called for a lift on the opening point of the final and Hüberli followed with an error on the second point? They shrugged and rolled to dominant performance.

Perhaps because it was such a rout, and perhaps because it ended on an anticlimactic service error, the immediate celebration after clinching the title felt subdued. By the time they got their hands on the trophy a few minutes later, the celebratory dances and trophy lift spoke to plenty of joy. But there was something to that first reaction. This wasn’t their first title. This wasn’t a surprise—to them or anyone else. The joy came, but for a second, it seemed mixed with relief.

More than seven years after playing their fist match together, this was less a dream than the expectation that they devote their lives to achieving. The sense of perspective was even there when the on-court host asked Brunner if it “was easy to play against this Spanish team.”

“A final is always a hard job,” Brunner said, parrying an inelegant question as easily as she defused the Spanish attacks. “I think the Spanish team did a very good job in this tournament, we knew that. We only played them twice so far. They’re a young team, and we knew they’re going full.”

It must have felt like looking in a mirror.

*Alvarez (left) and Moreno (right) during July’s tour stop in Montreal.*

The 2022 European Under-22 champions, Álvarez and Moreno are still in the midst of their college careers at TCU (they led TCU to the semifinals of this past spring’s NCAA tournament).

When Brunner the wunderkind won her first junior world title in 2011, Álvarez and Moreno were 9 years old. When the Swiss pair set out on the pro tour together in 2016, Álvarez was just deciding to give up tennis and get serious about beach volleyball.

For them, Saturday arrived in a hurry.

Not that they took any shortcuts to the final. They beat two recent former champions en route, eliminating two-time European champions and reigning Olympic silver medalists Graudina and Samoilova in the round of 16 and former European champions and reigning Olympic bronze medalists Vergé-Dépré and Mäder in a thrilling semifinal. They lost the opening set in that semifinal 27-25, trailed late in the third set and still had the mettle to win.

When Moreno, the darting, acrobatic, seemingly spring-loaded defender, saw Brunner reading every angle and digging every ball in the final, she might well have seen a reflection of her future, polished self. Yet she could have said much the same thing about three-time Italian Olympian Marta Menegatti—who she eliminated in straight sets in a quarterfinal.

*Moreno in action in July’s tour stop in Edmonton.*

The Spanish team was in no way out over its skis. They were capable of winning. On a different day (like any of the previous three days of this tournament), they might have. It’s just that when you’re young, you have a few too many of these days—especially against the best.

All of which helps explain why Álvarez could only laugh when she and Moreno finally got their first point in the second set—after Brunner nearly saved the point with a miraculous, reaction one-arm fling to keep the ball in play.

Not long after, Álvarez was smiling again, this time after Spain’s best moment of the match. During an extended rally, Moreno made one of her familiar full-extension, over-the-head blind saves, somehow putting the ball right where it needed to be for Álvarez to react and complete an athletic spike. The point cut the deficit to 10-8.

It was as close as Spain would get but also a show of resolve from a team that left defeated but not embarrassed.

As a Swiss fan, there was something bittersweet watching the final. To be sure, the end isn’t nigh. A second Euro title cements Brunner and Hüberli’s place as Olympic contenders in 2024. It also sets them up for this fall’s World Championships in Mexico. These are good times. Beyond the immediate future, Brunner, certainly, has every opportunity to be around for Los Angeles 2028. Hüberli would be far from the oldest Olympian, if she chose to continue playing that long.

And still, time is unbeaten. Pessimistic as the thought may be, there is only one chapter left after the peak. There is only decline. Many more days like Saturday may lie between now and that reality, but it is inevitable.

Somehow, seeing the Swiss at their best only underscored that. It’s the same feeling as reaching the later episodes of a brilliant series. It has been everything you hoped. It has entertained and inspired. And it will end.

Paradoxically, it’s the team that lost decisively that buoyed me Saturday. Spain’s story is just beginning. The potential still seems limitless, the characters still emerging. And the opening scenes, in person in Edmonton and Montreal and from afar in Vienna, promise great things.

Saturday, the Swiss and Spanish occupied the same sand in soggy Vienna. But not the same moment in time. The Swiss road led to Vienna. The Spanish road leads from it.

A reflection of life. Always a reflection of life.

Vous Travaillez Ici

While I was sitting alone in the media room at a volleyball tournament in Montreal, someone wearing a volunteer shirt entered the room and asked “vous travaillez ici?”

Fiddling with my camera, I felt the swell of irrational pride born of grasping the most mundane interaction in a foreign language. It was the same swell felt navigating the metro station earlier in the morning (the ubiquity of English training wheels everywhere notwithstanding).

In France, my French is, at best, survival level—adequate to (mostly) read signs, order things, ask questions, understand enough of a brief direct response to guess at the rest … and that’s about as far as it goes. In Quebec, it descends even further, to mostly useless.

But I understood this question! I was indeed working here, to a given value of “work.”

I smiled and replied “Oui, je travaille,” aware that this likely wasn’t the most grammatically nimble response but not confident enough in the conjugation (je suis travaillé?) of anything else.

Her brow furrowed slightly and she pointed at the floor and said … something. My run of comprehension ended abruptly. She beckoned me over, pointed again at a small puddle of water on the floor and repeated herself. I offered the universal helpless smile of ignorance.

Was she accusing me of spilling the water? It felt that way. J’accuse! After a morning in the hot sun, I could have assured her I valued every drop of water in my cup (although I would have struggled to assure her that in French).

“Mop,” she pantomimed in English.

Then she harrumphed, turned and left the room. A bit rude, I thought.

At which point it dawned on me that my shirt was the same light blue as those worn by the volunteers on site.

One domino tumbled into another.

If I asked someone “You work here?” I would almost certainly not be asking if they were, at that moment, engaged in the act of working in that space. I would be asking if they were employed there. Obviously.

But suffering from the heady combination of happiness to be at the tournament and understanding an unprompted question in French more complicated than “Ca va?” I had interpreted the words in the most literal manner possible.

It was a media work room, I was, more or less, media. I was working.

In reality, to her, I appeared to be a volunteer being a slacker in an empty room.

Vous travaillez ici, indeed.

I went back out to the courts. When I returned a few hours later, someone had mopped the puddle. Merci.

As You Were

I don’t like writing in the first person. I’m more comfortable turning the words on strangers, peeling away the layers and, for better or worse, inevitably finding something familiar.

It’s just that in traveling to Edmonton for a few days of beach volleyball, the stranger I found was me.

In the days before departing for Alberta, I began to doubt the wisdom of going. At least for me, it’s all to easy to confuse travel with time travel. I’m constantly tempted to return places. Part of it is rational. It’s nice to already know where to find a good cup of coffee or a good sunset. Layering exploration atop exploration allows a deeper understanding of a place or people. But part of the urge is distinctly irrational, a hope of returning to a place as it was. And as I was.

I love beach volleyball events. I love the ear-worm melodies that follow the circuit from stop to stop — “monster block” chants and endless snippets of “Fireball.” I love the way an event fits into the landscape, courts stretching along the helpfully built-in sand along the beach in Fort Lauderdale or tucked next to a nearly ice cold mountain stream in the Swiss Alps. Or even in the most recent case, a decidedly less lyrical vacant lot next to the home of the Edmonton Oilers.

A tournament is a world within the wider world, which has always been my favorite kind of story. In books, movies and series, let me sink into a place. Give me a good enough map and let me explore its side streets and history, even if only in my own imagination. Beach volleyball offers all of that, in the literal on-site grid of courts and the figurative side streets, hidden trails and cul-de-sacs of its recurring characters. It’s where I’m happiest, where I feel a purpose to explore, learn, chronicle. Not for any editor or employer. Just because it’s there.

It’s a feeling I’ve missed in the four years since standing on a train platform leaving Gstaad, listening to the crowd roar a short distance away. The few opportunities to catch that feeling in more recent times, mostly involving softball, have been fleeting, rushed and constrained by other commitments. Losing myself in work used to sounds like an oxymoron. The work was me.

These days, while I’m fortunate in many ways, that phrase sounds different to my ear.

It’s never wise to try and travel back in time, but it felt good to encounter that stranger in Edmonton.

Maybe we’ll run into each other again one day.

*Switzerland’s Zoé Vergé-Dépré takes in the quarterfinal.*

*A border battle between Italy and Austria.*

*Italy’s Marta Menegatti serves in pursuit of a fourth Olympic bid.*

*Spain (and TCU) partners Tania Moreno and Daniela Alvarez duel the Czechs.*

*The ageless Laura Ludwig greets Anouk Vergé-Dépré.*

*Switzerland’s Joana Mader battles USA’s Julia Scoles.*

*Canadians* *Heather Bansley, left, and Sophie Bukovec, right, on center court.*

*Rising Italian star Valentina Gottardi chases a ball off the court to save a point* …

*And finds it a price worth paying en route to a silver medal.*

*Laura Ludwig and new partner Louisa Lippmann came through qualifiers to make a 2024-sized impression.*

*Still fresh out of retirement,* *Heather Bansley, 35, had a week to remember.*

The Best Part of Myself

EDMONTON, Alberta — We don’t choose the story in which we’re cast. But we do sometimes control the script.

No one is born with great odds of becoming a professional athlete. But the odds of Esmée Böbner living out the life of an Olympic beach volleyball hopeful would have appeared particularly remote when she entered the world in the weeks before the new millennium.

She was born in Switzerland nearly eight months before the mountain resort town of Gstaad ever thought to host a professional beach volleyball tournament that grew over the next two decades into one of the sport’s signature events and a summer staple in the Alps. She was born nearly five years before Patrick Heuscher and Stefan Kobel earned bronze medals in the 2004 Olympics, the first Swiss medals in the sport (at the same Olympics in which a Swiss women’s team debuted).

*Esmée Böbner, left, and Zoe Vergé-Dépré, right, form one of Europe’s best young teams.*

She was born at an inflection point, when nothing became something. She grew up dreaming of something that previous generations didn’t even know to dream about. Half of the first Swiss women’s team to compete in the Olympics, Simone Kuhn was already 20 when she started playing on the sand. Someone called and told her she would make a good blocker. Sure enough, four years after the thought of playing beach volleyball first crossed her mind, she was a European champion and Olympian. That’s how these things begin.

Two decades later, Böbner had her sights set on the sand almost form the start. At 16, she received an invitation to train at Beachcenter Bern, the hub of Swiss beach volleyball. She didn’t need anyone to explain to her what the sport was.

“I think everyone in Switzerland starts indoor, but I knew early on I wanted to play beach,” Böbner said. “I really like the atmosphere here. I think it’s way more fun than indoors.”

Yet sitting forlornly at one of the dozen or so picnic tables arrayed beyond the outer courts at a recent tour stop in Edmonton, she didn’t look especially happy or blessed by the fortunes of history. Head bowed, she looked broken. Like someone who had traveled nearly five thousand miles and crossed eight time zones just to be miserable and jet lagged. She and partner Zoe Vergé-Dépré had just lost to Americans Kelley Kolinske and Hailey Harward. It wasn’t so much the loss against a credible, if new, American team that rankled. It was that she lost meekly, caught up in her own frustrations as mistakes, to borrow an Alpine metaphor, snowballed.

Two weeks earlier, the Swiss had lost valiantly—and memorably—on home sand in Gstaad. Down a set and trailing by double digits against a surging German team, the Swiss duo rallied to win the second set 25-23 before falling 15-12 in the final set. The loss still stung, denying them a place in the knockout rounds. But cheered off the court by the home crowd, their resiliency said plenty about one of the most upwardly mobile young European teams.

In Edmonton, there was no such valor to be found. And Böbner knew it.

Approached before the match about speaking with Böbner when all was said and done, the Swiss coach indicated it would be no problem. After the match, the tight-lipped, pained smile on his face as he walked past said more than enough. This might not be the best day to chat, after all. The postgame team meeting stretched on and on before Böbner and Vergé-Dépré faded away into the night.

“I had a hard day and I didn’t like my attitude on the court,” Böbner recounted a day later. “I had to restart and refocus and kind of search my identity again. … I’m really happy I could reset and start a new day.”

The chemistry (or is it alchemy?) of beach partnerships isn’t easy to comprehend. Not to an outsider. But Böbner pointed out that she’s fortunate to have a partner who understands her. Someone with whom there is open dialogue and encouragement, a true partner rather than a mere colleague. That helped in Edmonton, to not be trapped in her own head. But so did some decidedly universal Hollywood inspiration. Böbner watched King Richard, the 2021 Oscar nominee about the improbable rise of Serena and Venus Williams and their father.

The improbable rise of two women who very much took control of their own scripts in life.

A day later, entering the knockout round, the Swiss played on center court for the first time in the event—evident when they prematurely blew threw the public address announcer’s solo introductions and took the court together, left to stand somewhat awkwardly through the rest of the preamble.

Playing the last remaining Canadian team in front of a crowd that made no secret of its rooting interest, Böbner and Vergé-Dépré won in straight sets. Böbner wasn’t perfect. The serve that can be such a weapon never quite found the mark. She made some errors. But they didn’t linger. They didn’t prevent her from doing her part on the next point. After a quick trip back to the hotel to escape the sun, they returned and beat Americans Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles in the quarterfinals. A day after despair, they earned their second semifinal berth this summer.

The Swiss were again off their game in the semifinal, losing to Italy. And then they were valiant again, dropping a three-setter against the Czech Republic for bronze, 26-24 in the second set and 15-13 in the final set of a match that stretched well over an hour.

It wasn’t a dream ending, but they played through the end of the tournament. For a young team trying to climb the ladder, pushing ahead of schedule to displace one of the established Swiss giants—reigning Olympic bronze medalists Anouk Vergé-Dépré (Zoe’s older sister) and Joana Mader or former European champions Nina Brunner and Tanja Hüberli—that itself is a victory.

Zurich to Edmonton is a long way to travel with no guarantee of anything more than a day of volleyball. Yet for Böbner, the arduous journey was from the forlorn figure at that picnic table to the fighter playing through the tournament’s final hours.

Beach volleyball has a vibe all its own—the atmosphere that first appealed to Böbner all those years ago. But it’s also a grind, a life of unforgiving travel, the finest of competitive margins and ceaseless pressure for results. It can beat you down and rob you of your identity, if you let it. If it’s your passion, and has been for as long as you can remember, it can also lift you up.

“For me, it’s not the traveling,” Böbner said of her joy. “That’s cool, but I also like to be at home. It’s the passion you can give to something. It’s important to me to keep that passion. As long as I’m having fun doing it, I think I’m the best part of myself.

“That’s really important. It’s what I enjoy about beach volleyball.”

It was her good fortune to be born at precisely the right time to live out a dream.

What she or any of us do with tomorrow is ours to decide.