“We can play,” says Karla Borger. She is grateful for this, because given the Corona news situation, the competitive athlete knows: “It is a privilege to have a piece of normality.” The normality for the 31-year-old Olympian and two-time German champion in recent weeks has been that played beach volleyball at a relatively high level on a clay court in the immediate vicinity of the Düsseldorf football stadium.
With and against a large part of the German scene. This was due to the initiative of three beach volleyball crazy people, including their manager Constantin Adam and the professional player Alexander Walkenhorst. They were already creating a beach volleyball Bundesliga when the association did not yet believe that it could be possible.
Eight women’s teams and eight men’s teams each play twice against each other. Without viewers, but with a livestream that broadcast all the games in the virtual world. 100,000 spectators tuned in. At the end of the tournament, which lasts a total of 30 days, Karla Borger not only wants to be there, but also to win. And then in front of 32 spectators, who are now possible after adapting the hygiene concept.
Chat with the players
Instead of a large stage, the small frame was the focus in Düsseldorf. 16 players, plus referees and lines judges and a dozen volunteers who take care of the process. “I like the mood,” says Karla Borger about reduced life without the usual mess. The players know each other anyway, but there is rarely a chance to become as familiar with each other as here. Everyone lives in the same hotel just a few steps from the complex. They are with each other for a week at a time.
Karla Borger did not compete in Düsseldorf with her nominal partner Julia Sude, who took advantage of the chance to concentrate on her dentistry studies after the Olympic postponement and the cancellation of the world tour. For this, Svenja Müller played at Borger’s side. The 19-year-old from Dortmund is one of the greatest block talents in Germany and has a height of 1.93 meters. Karla Borger, 1.80 meters tall, is one of the ten best defenders in the world. Already in 2013 she had won world championship silver with Britta Büthe, at the 2016 Olympic Games they were ninth.
If you wanted to see Borger and Müller play, you could do that on the Twitch streaming platform, where all games were broadcast live and commented on. Twitch is otherwise specialized in gaming and virtual games. Watching real sports there initially overwhelmed some habitual users on the net: “What is that blatant graphic?” Asked one when he saw the beach volleyball players before he realized that these are real women in real sports. Karla Borger also finds this experience enriching because she uses Twitch to create completely new target groups that have never existed in her world before – and vice versa.
The chat and comment functions are in continuous operation and the athletes respond. Since only a small budget is available for the production, the players comment on the matches of the others in turn in the livestream. This creates a completely new familiarity that is otherwise not possible even in the approachable beach scene.
Borger / Müller had won twelve of their 14 games in the first week and six of the first eight in the second week. Then Borger’s young partner ran out of energy. It was taken out to be fit again in the Final Four. Svenja Müller has been replaced by the equally young Chenoa Christ for the last six preliminary round matches. The Bundesliga concept expressly provides for this. Other pairings also changed over time, so that the overall table, in which “Karla & Friends” are now used instead of Borger / Müller, does not appear to be one hundred percent fair. It makes a difference whether a player like Sandra Ittlinger, who is acting on the margins of the world class, is brought on or a young talent.
But such little things don’t matter for the extremely balanced Karla Borger. Rather, she also enjoys her “upbringing job” on the field, as she explains with a laugh. Borger knows: The lively Chenoa Christ, whom she knows well from the training center in Stuttgart, can be cited loudly so that she can show off her strengths.
The cheers of the two were all the greater when they won their first match on the third attempt, 18:16 in the tie break. “Karla & Friends” won 20 of 28 games at the end of the 30 days and are first in the table. They have qualified for the final four of the best this weekend.
.
