He “lost his heart to this sport at the age of seven,” says beach volleyball Olympic champion Julius Brink: “It stays for life.” And that’s why the now 41-year-old is ready to take on responsibility and develop from being a critic of the association to being the vice-president of the German Volleyball Association (DVV).
The 47-year-old Markus Dieckmann, two-time European beach volleyball champion, will be the head of the new management team as DVV President, which is to lead the association out of the ongoing sporting and personal crisis. “I don’t shy away from the leadership role,” said Dieckmann, but at the same time made it clear that transparency and communication are very important factors for him in order to be successful together. When it comes to the question of style, he wants to create a climate in which one can talk and work reasonably and constructively.
The two former beach champions were elected this Sunday at an extraordinary general meeting in Bremen with a large majority and no dissenting votes. The new election became necessary after the previous president, René Hecht, resigned at the end of July following severe criticism of his work.
Dieckmann, Brink and their management team now see it as a priority to bring the volleyball family back together, to create a “new start” and to improve visibility. The first priority is to fill the vacant positions, including both sports directors, in order to give the national teams “maximum support” in the fight for Olympic participation.
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Lukas Kampa, captain of the men’s team, is hoping for a “breath of fresh air” from the new management team, as well as “continuity” at the management level. And a better “overall culture” in the association. In his opinion, all the stress at association level in the recent past “has nothing to do with the sporting performance”, which has recently turned out weaker than expected for the national team. Nevertheless, it’s nice to have a structure around you that is “stable and performance-enhancing,” he said before the start of the European Volleyball Championships in Italy, which begins for the German team on Wednesday (6 p.m.) with the game against Estonia .
The fact that two former beach volleyball players are now in charge of the association is not a problem for Daniel Sattler, the representative of the volleyball league. “We stand hand in hand in the presidency,” he said, giving no chance of any split tendencies from the outset: “We have to think of Halle and Beach together.”
