TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Maybe the torch has been passed.
Maybe the six-year run of Anders Mol and Christian Sorum’s uninterrupted dominance has met its end.
The players on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour voted that, for the 2024 season anyway, Norway’s proverbial torch has been passed to their neighbors, a 22- and 23-year-old from Sweden who have jump-set and poke-set and disrupted the game in a manner that has no precedent.
David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, receiving an astonishing 90.4 percent of the votes from their peers on the Beach Pro Tour, are the 2024 Team of the Year.
That Sweden won Team of the Year is not a surprise. In a stretch dating back to the summer of 2023, Ahman and Hellvig made 10 consecutive finals on the Beach Pro Tour, 11 when including European Championships. Not even Mol and Sorum, including a 2019 season in which they won eight gold medals in 13 events, had gone on such a tear.
If there is an event to be won in beach volleyball, Sweden has won it in the past two years alone. European Championships? They already have two. Olympic Games? After a slow start, dropping two matches in pool play, they resumed their tour de force, claiming gold in the most lopsided final in Olympic beach volleyball history. Beach Pro Tour Finals? Checked at the end of the 2023 season.
They finished as the No. 1 team in the world and don’t even have the full eight finishes included.
But how they won — receiving 85 percent more votes than Mol and Sorum, the 2023 Team of the Year — is a bit of a surprise.
That’s how dominant Sweden was in 2024, even if they did drop the final event, the Beach Pro Tour Finals, to Norway. That, of course, is the otherworldly standard set by Ahman and Hellvig: Finals are an expectation, silver, to some, can be considered a surprisingly low finish.
But with the finals going the way of Norway, and the votes going the way of Sweden, it lays the table for the sport’s most intriguing rivalry since perhaps Alison and Bruno vs. Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena.
As for the rest of the awards? Well, you can guess where the majority ended up: Scandinavia.
Most Valuable Player: David Ahman
Honorable mention:
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Anders Mol
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Jonatan Hellvig
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Clemens Wickler
Beach volleyball fans have been spoiled these past three years, able to tune into two of the most special and unique talents the sport has ever known in Anders Mol and David Ahman. While four players ultimately were nominated – Mol, Ahman, Jonatan Hellvig and Clemens Wickler — it is, most can agree, a two-horse race.
For the first time in his young and unbelievably precocious career, David Ahman has won the Most Valuable Player in beach volleyball.
David Ahman is the 2024 MVP
Best Defensive Player: David Ahman
Honorable mention:
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Clemens Wickler
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Yorick de Groot
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Ahmed Tijan
It isn’t just that David Ahman makes digs — he makes digs that shouldn’t be dug. A perfectly hit cut shot is mere inches from the sand, and in comes Ahman, out of the screen, not only popping it up for Jonatan Hellvig to set, but lifting it to the point that Hellvig can either option or jump-set. And not only does Ahman pop up and give himself an approach — he’s often sprinting in the opposite direction, making for a nightmarish scenario for an opposing defense, who now have to choose between chasing Ahman for what could be another open-net attack, or respecting the option of Hellvig, one of the best in the game at exactly that.
There’s a reason Sweden was such a regular in the gold medal matches this season.
The block-defense of Hellvig and Ahman were, it could be argued, the primary reason.
David Ahman is the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year
Best Offensive Player: Anders Mol
Honorable mention:
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David Ahman
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Jonatan Hellvig
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Cherif Younousse
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Evandro Goncalves
For the second straight year, and fourth time in his already-storied career, Anders Mol is the Offensive Player of the Year. Any further evidence one would need can be found either in the semifinals of the Joao Pessoa Elite16, in which Mol took over with a new tool — an on-two attack from all over the court — in the suffocating heat, or, well, all three playoff matches in the Beach Pro Tour Finals.
Just when you thought he couldn’t get any more dominant, Mol reached a new plane — Norse God Mode is the term we used on the VBTV broadcast — and it led to three straight sweeps over three elite teams in Germany, Qatar, Sweden. On the year, Mol sided out at 72% and was an astonishing 80% on-two, per BeachData — numbers that leave little doubt as to why he is, yet again, the Offensive Player of the Year.
Anders Mol is your Offensive Player of the Year.
Best Blocker: Anders Mol
Honorable mention:
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Jonatan Hellvig
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Nils Ehlers
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Joaquin Bello
For as long as he’s still playing, and has two arms and two legs and 10 fingers and toes, this will be Anders Mol’s award to lose. Four times now has Mol been named the Blocker of the Year, and, per usual, this race wasn’t particularly close, with Mol bringing in 60.3 percent of the vote. While there are stats aplenty for blocks and soft blocks, there is no way to measure how many shots Mol alters when he is at the net, creating errors and shots or swings directly into the lap of his ever-patient defender, Christian Sorum, but suffice it to say: No one in the world does it like Mol.
Anders Mol is the 2024 Blocker of the Year.
Best Server: Evandro Goncalves
Honorable mention:
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Clemens Wickler
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Anders Mol
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Steven van de Velde
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Ahmed Tijan
If Evandro Goncalves were to retire today, he would go down as the greatest server in the history of beach volleyball. Period. The three-time Olympian has now been named the Server of the Year seven consecutive times in which the award has been presented. He could have realistically rested his case this season when he piled up 37 aces — 37! — during a gold medal run at the Recife Challenge in April. But, as he is wont to do, he simply continued piling them up, and coming home with another Server of the Year nod.
Evandro Goncalves won his seventh Server of the Year
Most Improved: Nils Ehlers
Honorable mention:
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Joaquin Bello
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Noslen Diaz
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Jorge Alayo
This was the closest race of any, either men or women, with Nils Ehlers taking home Most Improved by a single vote over England’s Joaquin Bello. The 6-foot-11 blocker was an unsolvable riddle in side-out, putting away 71 percent of the serves sent his way, while hitting another 60 percent in transition and tacking on 236 blocks. Those numbers paved the way for one of the most consistent seasons on the Beach Pro Tour of any team, with nine of 10 finishes in the top-five and a pair of silver medals, most notably at the Paris Olympic Games. Should he and Clemens Wickler remain together, they are one of the few who can consistently challenge Norway and Sweden.
Nils Ehlers is the 2024 Most Improved Player
Rookie of the year: Kristians Fokerots
Honorable mention:
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Jorge Alayo
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Noslen Diaz
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Javier Bello
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Timo Hammerberg
Talk about a late-season run. Kristians Fokerots had barely participated in professional beach volleyball prior to a last-second entry, in which he and Martins Plavins began on the reserve list, in August’s European Championships. How’d that go? They promptly won the whole thing, shocking, at the time, virtually everyone in the beach volleyball world. They quickly proved it to be no fluke, taking a fifth at the Joao Pessoa Elite16 and a bronze at the Rio Elite16. More impressive than the finishes — four medals in six events when including the European Championships, which is impressive enough — were the scalps they took to get there, notching wins over Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler, Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, and Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum. Just 19 years old, Fokerots will be a problem for the beach volleyball world potentially for decades, multiples of them, to come.
Kristians Fokerots is the 2024 Rookie of the Year
Sportsman of the Year: Paolo Nicolai
Honorable mention:
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Pablo Herrera
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Christian Sorum
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Stefan Boermans
The 2024 season was a bittersweet one amongst beach volleyball fans. Sweet, because the Paris Olympic Games were perhaps the most indelible of them all, with a venue that will go down as one of the most iconic ever. Bitter, because, as it goes after Olympic quads are finished, it quickly became a farewell tour of sorts.
At December’s Beach Pro Tour Finals, we had to bid adieu to Paolo Nicolai.
Nicolai has no shortage of on-court accomplishments: four Olympic Games, a silver medal at the Rio Olympics, 32 medals. He will go down as the greatest player in Italian beach volleyball history.
But his work beyond the court has not gone unnoticed. Quick to call his own touches, perpetually prepared to offer a smile and a helping hand, Nicolai was the friendly uncle of the Beach Pro Tour.
The good news? It isn’t a permanent goodbye. Nicolai is stepping into a coaching role with the Italian Federation, where he will be charged with keeping it as one of the most dangerous in Europe.
So it isn’t farewell, or ciao, really, but a simple: We’ll see you later, in a different role.
Paolo Nicolai is the 2024 Sportsman of the Year
Beach Volleyball Man of the Year: Mark Paaluhi
There is no shortage of griping in the world of beach volleyball. A desire for more prize money, a friendlier travel schedule, tournaments in specific locations, tournaments run differently. The list could go on. What there is a shortage of in beach volleyball are individuals prepared to do something about it.
Mark Paaluhi did something this year.
When Hermosa Beach was left off of the AVP schedule this year, Paaluhi, like many locals in the South Bay, was discouraged. But he didn’t just take to social media to air out his frustrations; he did something about it, working with the city to put on a $200,000 event that was streamed on VBTV.
Fifteen-thousand of those dollars came out of his own pocket.
Beyond that, he allowed a mix of international players and American, encouraging unique partnerships such as Tina Graudina and Julia Scoles, Miles Partain and Alex Ranghieri, and several others.
How successful was it? Paaluhi signed a three-year deal with Hermosa to continue putting on the event.
And he is the SANDCAST Man of the Year.
