A history of the development of the CitiBeach Volleyball centres and some of their achievements to date (Feb 2006)
Kirra Huddy and Emma Spiegelhauer, from Townsville, won the Under-17 Girls title at the National Junior Beach Volleyball Championships, held on the Gold Coast, 16-18 January 2006 They are in the forefront of a new wave of beach volleyballer, who has learned the game at a managed and specially constructed beach facility, with no indoor volleyball background.
Beach volleyball as a professionally managed sport for the average competitor, as opposed to the elite athlete, in Australia, has only been around since about 1993. Prior to that any tournaments were generally directed towards committed indoor players during the "recess" from indoor competition. These tournaments were played on beaches over one or two days in the December-February period.
In Queensland at least, Chris Madden was the first to identify that there was a market for a managed competition to be played all year round, and particularly to include the "gumbie" player - the one who had no aspiration to high skill levels, but a person who in many cases was not being catered to by the indoor volleyball scene. In 1993 Chris built 4 beach courts on land adjacent to his indoor sports centre next door to the Lang Park football stadium in Brisbane, complete with white sand and palm trees. The attraction of the formula - a grade to cater to each level, night lighting, umpires supplied etc - was an unqualified success.
Dick Moody expanded on the concept later in 1993, with 2 courts built adjacent to his indoor sports centre in Rockhampton, and 4 courts as a stand-alone business in Townsville. These went a step further, with individual court lighting, electronic scoreboards, and a swimming pool and barbeque area. Two more courts were added to the Rockhampton facility in 1995 and a new centre was built in Mackay in 1997, replicating the formula, and together the 3 CitiBeach Volleyball centres catered to over 500 teams playing every week, throughout the year.
The demand and expectation of the better players, to have a Queensland-wide tour revived, led Chris and Dick to combine to negotiate a deal to conduct a Queensland Beach Volleyball Tour, with the Queensland Volleyball Association. Their company, ProSports Marketing, managed the tour under licence from the QVA for 4 years, from 1995 to 1998. It was based on pairs competition, with some Mixed 4 events, had cash prizes, and about 12 events were held each year. Interesting venues were Hamilton Island, Port Douglas north of Cairns, and of course the Gold Coast.
"With the climate in Queensland, we were able to play events through more of the year than would be practicable in other States", said Dick Moody. "But by the end of the 1997-98 season, Chris and I had realised that the concentration on these elite events was distracting our attention from our core businesses. We felt we had done our job in re-establishing the Queensland Tour, all the key players with higher aspirations were playing, and it was time for us to pull back and for QVA to take over the responsibility for the Tour. They've done that and developed junior titles too, so we are comfortable in the role we played."
"In business you need to respond to where your customers want to go", Dick Moody said when we asked him what he did with the spare time he then had. "We developed a concept for holding tournaments at each of our CitiBeach Volleyball venues. To be true to our philosophy that our business is based on all players, not just the elite ones, we had to have tournaments that followed that concept. We are complementing the QVA Tour, not competing with it. We have our "CitiBeach Challenge" over two days, with pairs, fours, and Mixed 6 grades, a Masters grade too. A presentation dinner and party afterwards are all important parts of the mix. We can have over 100 teams competing across 8 grades, with more than 200 games played for the weekend. It is a massive draw when you consider that we generally play on just 4 courts. Games can run until 11pm on the Saturday, and start again at 8am on the Sunday. Simon James has been our Tournament Coordinator over the 7 years we have been running, and he does a great job in producing a draw to manage the logistics. You have to remember that our centres are all about 4 hours drive apart. To drive from Cairns to Rockhampton takes 12 hours, and is over 1000 km. We welcome players regardless of whether they compete at our centres or not. Players from Cairns have been particularly keen and we now include a round in Cairns as part of our program. We have put a good deal of emphasis too on developing junior players. Summer Lochowicz started her beach career at CitiBeach Townsville. Lauren Christiansen, Vicki-Lee Goodman, Emma Spiegelhauer, and Kirra Huddy, all from Townsville, and Isaac Kapa, Robbie Kuhn, and Ashley Macmaster from Rockhampton, have all won National Junior Titles. Not bad for North Queensland when you consider the travel logistics for competition and training!"
In 2010 the "CitiBeach Challenge" will start in Cairns, the weekend after Easter. It will coincide with the North Queensland Games, which is held every 2 years, and caters to about 25 sports and about 3000 athletes. When the event was held in Mackay at Easter 1998 Natalie Cook and Angela Clark teamed up and won the Ladies pairs - of course!! Natalie was a special guest of the Games organisers and was a great hit and a significant drawcard to promote the sport. In 2000 the N.Q. Games were held in Townsville. Natalie Cook and her partner Kerrie Pottharst were again special guests and played exhibition games which drew a big audience. In September they went on to win the gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.