Here’s another “all but joined at the hip” pairing, only you may not have heard of these fellas. But they’ve been a successful pair.
Both have extensive backgrounds in indoor volleyball, and have played it at the Olympic level as well as beach. Schuil came to the national team at an unquestionable high point, as he was part of the team won gold in Atlanta in 1996. They also won the World League that year.
Nummerdor, three years his junior, was actually in consideration for the squad taken to Atlanta, but he played poorly in the weeks leading up to the Olympic tournament. At the tender age of 20, Nummerdor surely had plenty to look forward to in a long and rewarding career, but he has described his 1996 non-selection (perhaps with the hindsight that the team went on to win gold) as the biggest disappointment of his sporting career. Both Schuil and Nummerdor, who both played the outside hitter position (despite Schuil being a good 4 or 5 inches taller) were part of the teams that took 5th place in Sydney and 9th place in Athens. 2004 marked perhaps the nadir for the Dutch national team, as they for five years running missed out on the World League. Nummerdor and Schuil took up beach volleyball in 2005 and by 2006 they had transitioned fully to the outdoor game.
The two are a pretty typical beach volleyball pairing, with the beanpole Schuil doing the setting and blocking and Nummerdor, as he gets most serves, doing the hitting and back-row defense. They had a so-so first year on the FIVB tour, playing six tournaments and peaking with a fifth place performance at the Acapulco Open, but they did much better in CEV play (CEV is the European circuit). They played six tournaments there and took their first tourney win on the beach in July in Valencia, Spain. It’s not often that a team can rise to success that quickly, but these guys certainly had the background and the talent to do it.
2007 got Nummerdor and Schuil their first FIVB win, and it happened to come in the first tournament of the season, the Bahrain Open. It was their only win of the year, as they added a silver and a bronze in FIVB play and whiffed on three title matches in CEV competition, but those three podium finishes gave them a prize purse more than five times what they won in 2006, so I’m sure they were anything but disappointed.
And then 2008 was a big year. It was the last year they played on the CEV with any regularity, and they were pretty clearly the best team on the circuit that year. They won four of the five tournaments they entered, dropping just two matches out of 28. They weren’t the top team in the year-end CEV rankings, but that’s probably only because they divided their attention. They also played 11 FIVB tournaments, taking gold in Zagreb and Dubai along with silver at the Paris and Gstaad Grand Slams. And after playing, between them, five Olympic indoor volleyball tournaments, they were part of the beach volleyball tournament in Beijing, but this was perhaps one of the low points in the partnership’s history. They breezed through pool play, and their first knockout stage match, but were shockingly beaten (21-19, 21-19) by the #17 seeded team from Georgia (the country, not the state). Their final placing of fifth exactly matched their tournament seed, but they were so close to playing for a medal, and may have committed the cardinal sin of overlooking their competition, thinking they were already there.
The duo turned their attentions to the better-paying FIVB in 2009. They played but one CEV tournament, winning it (they did the same in 2010). They had their best season in FIVB competition in 2009, but it didn’t start out that hot. Through the first seven tournaments, they had only a bronze medal to show for themselves, and had finished two separate tournaments as low as 17th. Ouch! But the final three tournaments of the year, Opens in Åland (Finland), The Hague (Netherlands …hopefully you already knew that), and Sanya (China) all went the Dutch pair’s way. And it’s not like they had a cakewalk to get there — they had to overcome a loss in China and get through the loser’s bracket to make their way to the gold medal match, and in Finland they faced competition the quality of Alison/Harley and Brink/Reckermann. For their successes, both players won end-of-season FIVB tour awards, with Nummerdor being named Defensive Player of the Year and Schuil sharing honors as Most Outstanding Player with Harley.
They had a rough go of it in 2010, playing 8 FIVB tournaments and failing to medal in any of them. They came close at the Myslowice Open, but were eliminated in fifth place after losses to Brink/Reckermann and Alison/Emanuel. To that they added six ninth places. The cynical would say there was only one way to go from there, but indeed, they did improve in 2011, getting to gold medal finals at Opens in The Hague and Agadir, Morocco, taking the title in the latter, defeating Brink/Reckermann (and quite a little rivalry these two Central European duos have had) to gain it. Nummerdor also won Defensive Player of the Year honors for the second time in 2011.
And they’ve had a strong 2012 as well. No one team has dominated the FIVB tour this season, as five different duos have two tournament wins. Nummerdor and Schuil are one of those five, taking home Grand Slams in Beijing and Klagenfurt, Austria, to go with a silver at the Moscow Grand Slam to put them ninth in the year-end rankings. That’s equal to their best year-end ranking, which came in 2009. Like fine wine, these guys! Unfortunately for them the Olympics were again a bit of a heartbreak, as they lost to old foes Brink and Reckermann in the semifinals and then to the Latvians in the bronze medal match.
Unlike other players I’ve profiled, this is probably the end of the story for these two. I don’t think Schuil has come out and said he’s hanging it up, but dude is 39, and if nothing else expecting him to hang on for another Olympic cycle is probably asking too much. Nummerdor is “only” 36, but he’s just as well-traveled with just as extensive a career, and after seven years with same partner, I doubt he’ll want to continue with another (frankly it shocked me when I found out that Kerri Walsh wanted to continue after her partner retired). They weren’t the most dominant team ever, but they had their moments in the sun, and were always a force to be reckoned with. They weren’t a team you relished drawing in pool play, that’s for sure. So I raise my glass to ’em, if this is indeed the end of the line for the preeminent Dutch pairing in men’s beach volleyball.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
