OVA News

There isn’t much Christian Redmann sits around wishing for other than 12 months of summer. He has worked hard to earn everything he has accomplished in his beach volleyball career.

His career began with a unique situation in his home town of Oro Station. “I started playing beach because my best friend got a beach court in his backyard when we were about 16 and we played every day.”

Christian quickly found his way from the backyard to the world stage competing with Chris Simek at the U21 World Championships in Italy where the team finished fifth. From there he experienced success on the FIVB Satellite and Challenger tour with teammate Josh Binstock. The team finished on the podium three times in 2006.

Things started to really take off for Christian when he partnered with National Team veteran Rich VanHuizen. No one knew what to expect at their first tournament together in Poland. The team surprised everyone with a 17th place finish. Then the world took notice. They finished 9th at the biggest event of the year, the FIVB World Championships in Norway, then a 5th place finish at a Grand Slam in Russia.

“There were a lot of special memories some of my favorites were beating Brazil (Bruno-Maciel) in the first match of the Worlds, beating Norway (Skarlund-Spinnangr) on centre court in Norway at the world championships in front of 9,000 people. Our 5th in Russia was also a nice memory an even though we lost our quarterfinal game against the number one team in the world (Brink-Reckermann of Germany) was a great memory but also a bad one. Knowing we had come so close and not beating them was tough. Playing on the world tour is amazing. Playing in front of so many people is such an amazing experience that not many people get to have. You are able to experience so many extreme emotions at first then learning how to control them is pretty cool too!”

OVA: What was the biggest change that made you a main draw team?
Redmann: “I think my attitude towards the game changed a lot this year. I became much more competitive in practice and training. We focused a lot on what we could control. Our mental state going into games and how hard we worked while we were competing.”

Christian’s path started like many Ontario athletes, playing for his school and area club team. He sees a lot of benefits for indoor athletes who play beach.“For indoor players I think playing beach really helps players develop all their skills. It also helps to become self sufficient and to think on your own and be able to strategize and react in certain situations. My favourite part of beach is the involvement in the game. There are only 2 players on the court so you are involved in every play. I like being able to have an influence over the outcome of the game.”

OVA: What advice would you give to any athletes with the goal of representing Canada?
Redmann: “Never give up on yourself. You always need to be able to focus on improving and doing your best, and when you can do that things like making the national team or winning seem to fall into place.”

We would like to thank Christian Redmann for taking the time to help write this article.

If you would like to recommend an athlete for PROfiles please contact Josh Nichol jnichol@ontariovolleyball.org | 416-426-7233.