Net heights have to be perfect.
Sand is always moving around, so there’s never a continuous flat playing surface.
The lines are fixed to the sand, but not like the painted lines on a basketball court.
Life can be tough in the sand for beach volleyball players if the playing surface isn’t up to the international standards the world’s best athletes expect when their feet hit the sand.
The court manager is the guy or gal who is responsible for making the conditions perfect for the athletes and officials, and that carries a fair amount of responsibility, but Corner Brook’s Finton Gaudette has a knack for getting it right.
The Corner Brook native just served as one of the court managers for the 2018 CEV Dela Beach Volleyball European Championships in Apeldoorn, Holland — his fourth international beach volleyball tournament as a court manager.
As part of his role, Gaudette served on a team of volunteers who were responsible for managing the competition venue and the crew of ball snaggers and sand levelers who help make it run smoothly. Ball snaggers retrieve balls gone astray so when an athlete goes back to serve there is already a ball waiting for him or her, and crews are busy pushing rakes to level off the sand as often as possible to ensure a perfect playing surface.
He was also responsible for crowd control for things such as control of where photographers can go to take photos, and prior to the competition he helped set up all the equipment and made sure the playing surface met international competition standards for beach volleyball.
“It was an amazing experience. I felt really honoured to be one of those people that got invited,” Gaudette said this week after arriving home from a long journey.
Gaudette has been a mover and shaker in the beach volleyball world for a number of years. His connection to the game really got going in 2006 when he completed his Level 3 beach volleyball coaching certification in Toronto with Damion Stapleton of Halifax and Cherie Campbell of Fredericton.
They became close after spending time together trying to improve their knowledge of the game and coached the sport for their respective provinces at the 2009 Canada Games.
Stapleton hosted an international beach volleyball event in Halifax in 2011 and it was deemed a huge success by beach volleyball officials from around the world, so Stapleton was asked to host the world Under-21 beach volleyball championships the following year and he took on the challenge.
Stapleton invited Gaudette to join him as a court manager for the Halifax tournament and the relationship continued to grow. He was back doing his court manager duties at a major beach volleyball event in Toronto in 2016, and earlier this year Gaudette worked with Stapleton at a Beach Worlds major tournament in Florida and they received high praise for their efforts from Jaop van Iersel, the technical supervisor with the International Volleyball Federation, who runs major beach volleyball events throughout the Netherlands.
It was one thing to be asked to work as a court manager for events in Halifax or Toronto, where people were familiar with your work, but Gaudette was particularly proud of this gig because the invite came from somebody who lives on the other side of the world who just happened to be impressed with the way he handled himself in Florida.
“It was an amazing feeling just to get the invitation,” he said. “They love Canadians in the Netherlands, so they welcomed us with open arms, and we got a lot of high praise over there, so it makes you feel really good that you’re at an international level.”
