The Association Beach Volleyball (ABV) provides a platform for the world’s beach volleyball community to unite and once again take responsibility for and control of this great game. The ABV is not a governing body but is instead a facilitator that brings the community together so that the sport can once again grow and evolve solely in response to the desires of the beach volleyball community.
The ABV’s founding members believe in the self-organising principle. That the sport will naturally and organically grow in harmony with the community if kept free from the influence of corporations driven solely by a profit motive. This is not to say that the founding members don’t support corporate sponsorship but we certainly don’t support corporate influence in decision making regarding how the game is played and how tournaments are run.
The ABV has no agenda to link the game of beach volleyball with the game of indoor / hard-court volleyball. We view beach volleyball and indoor volleyball as separate although similar sports.
It is important to recognise that the FIVB, AVP and NVL etc. do NOT own or control the sport of beach volleyball. These corporate entities govern only THEIR VERSION of the game of beach volleyball. The version of beach volleyball they are delivering to the community is, in our opinion, heavily influenced by the corporate profit motive and the unnatural attempts to amalgamate beach volleyball with hard-court volleyball in rules and game style.
You will appreciate that these ‘governing’ bodies DO NOT govern the beach volleyball community nor do they govern the sport itself. They have absolutely no control at all over anything other than the dispensation of their own processes. As a beach volleyball community member you do not have any obligation at all to these corporate entities or their representatives. They will lay claim to custodianship of the sport of beach volleyball but as corporations they own only their own processes. Please do not be fooled into thinking that they have any blanket authority over the game or its community.
What we are providing here is a platform for the community to take over the governance role and create the sport of beach volleyball as it was intended – for the people that play it. This however requires the community to take responsibility and actively participate in creating and serving as custodian of the game they want to play.
Two major changes have occurred in the game over the last fifteen years which we believe were introduced for the corporate driven reasons mentioned above. These are ‘rally point scoring’ and the reduction in court size to 16m x 8m. Without going into the specifics of why this was done we are introducing a platform that returns the game to how it was played before these changes.
Since the community will decide how the game evolves it may very well be that we return to adopt these rule changes. However, no rules or regulations will be imposed by a purported governing authority.
The other major stance we are introducing initially is the idea that, as a global game like tennis, anyone can play with anyone else regardless of country of origin. This way we will get the best of the best playing our great game. There will be no federations. Players will be FREE to play with whom they chose. With the court size opened up and side-out scoring reintroduced we will also see a return to a multitude of playing styles capable of world class performance. How far you go as a player however will be entirely up to you and not the secret meetings of self-serving federations.
Initially, we sought to introduce this at a local level and see what we could build from there. However, we are very fortunate to have the support of a global freedom movement http://globalfreedommovement.org/, the New Earth Nation (NEN) (newearthproject.org), behind us. NEN has a sports network and are providing all the advice we need to get this up and running as a global concern in a much shorter space of time.
The success of this endeavour is entirely up to you, the beach volleyball community. We will provide the platform and its then up to those mad passionate beach volleyball fanatics to drive the process forward.
We look forward to watching this all unfold!
Haydn & Brett
