The North Devon’s pairing of Ellie Austin and Anaya Evans took on the world earlier this summer in a sponsored trip to Lucerne for the FIVB’s World U21 competition. We caught up with Ellie (No 2) and asked her about her experience.
My story began 11 years ago when I first started playing beach volleyball with Anaya in primary school. Since then we have competed in various competitions together and have now competed in our first international competition together.
We traveled to Lucerne Switzerland on the 9th of May. On arrival we were overwhelmed with the incredible scenery and were extremely excited to compete is such an amazing place. Before the competition we put hard work Into training and getting used to the conditions. We trained and played friendly games with Turkey.
The experience of being put up against older girls and keeping up to the same standard gave me a boost for the games to come. Going into the draw the nerves started to hit me, seeing the other teams all in the same room waiting for the draw.
The tension in the room was high when we got drawn with USA we knew it was going be a challenge but we had a positive mind set to take them on.
After the draw the team talk became more specific developing our ideas on what the game was going to be like. The next morning we headed down to the courts in preparation for the morning match.
We did our normal warm up routine to prepare for the game. Seeing the team we had to take a lot on board because it was the first time we had seen them before.
We started the game feeling the pressure and fell behind during the first set, losing badly. We then pulled ourselves together and fought as hard as we could to put pressure on the opponents and took us to a lead of 16-14 up.
We linked well together and brought to court what we know we could. In the end unfortunately team USA pushed past. Although we were very disappointed we had an amazing experience and took a lot on board.
Ellie Austin
Editors note: Most major events have a mascot, I like this one…. perhaps we should get our own SWVA mascot?
(Photos from FIVB)
