There is an undeniably fascinating element to the 2025 Beach Pro Tour Team of the Year, Elmer Andersson and Jacob Holting-Nilsson.
For the first half of the season, they weren’t any good.
From the season-opener in Yucatan, Mexico, in March, through the Stare Jablonki Challenge at the end of June, the 19-year-old Andersson and 20-year-old Holting-Nilsson had just a single finish better than 13th. The back-to-back gold medal winners in the fall of 2024 had plummeted so far they were just a few spots shy of being relegated to Challenge qualifiers, and had already fallen into the reserve lists for Elites.
But in the three days separating Stare Jablonki and the Gstaad Elite, enough teams dropped out to allow Sweden’s youngsters to slip into the qualifier.
The landscape of the Beach Pro Tour may never be the same.
The trajectory of Andersson and Holting-Nilsson’s season after that resembles a moon shot, a meteoric rise the likes the beach volleyball world has seen twice in the past decade and know very well what it means. The run they made in the ensuing five months — silver in Gstaad, gold in Baden, silver in Montreal, gold in Cape Town, silver at the World Championships — is reminiscent of the explosion made by Anders Mol and Christian Sorum in 2018 and the scintillating breakout of their countrymen, David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, in 2023. In both of the latter cases, the season following their breakout proved to be their biggest; Mol and Sorum would win eight of 13 events in 2019; Ahman and Hellvig won an Olympic gold medal and made seven finals in 2024.
What 2026 will look like is anybody’s guess, but there is at least one certainty: There will be no sophomore slump.
Despite their youth, Andersson and Holting-Nilsson seem preternaturally equipped to handle the pressure of expectation. So cool were they during their breakout run of three straight finals from July in Gstaad through mid-August in Montreal that they have since been dubbed The Icemen.
And those Icemen, after a season in which they made more finals than any other team, won more prize money than any other pair, and out-performed the previous two Olympic gold medal-winning duos, have been named the 2025 Beach Pro Tour Team of the Year.
Honorable Mention, 2025 Team of the Year
- David Ahman, Jonatan Hellvig, Sweden
- Anders Mol, Christian Sorum, Norway
- Stefan Boermans, Yorick de Groot, Netherlands
- Cherif Younousse, Ahmed Tijan, Qatar
2023 Team of the Year: Ondrej Perusic, David Schweiner
2024 Team of the Year: David Ahman, Jonatan Hellvig
Anders Mol is the 2025 MVP/Volleyball World photo
MVP: Anders Mol
Honorable Mention
- David Ahman, Sweden
- Jacob Holting-Nilsson, Sweden
- Cherif Younousse, Qatar
The King of Beach Volleyball remains King.
Mol first won this award in 2018, when he was just 21 years old. Seven years later, he has now captured the Most Valuable Player in beach volleyball three times, and the first since 2019.
How dominant is Mol, still? The 28-year-old either won or was nominated for every single category for which he’d be reasonably eligible. He and Christian Sorum finished third in the running for Team of the Year, he took MVP by a landslide, smashed the field in Offensive Player of the Year voting, made it no contest for Blocker of the Year, was second for Server of the Year (a very, very, very distant second, but second nonetheless) and, to top it all, received multiple votes for the Sportsmanship Award — because he’s also an upstanding human being.
While the rest of the world grows infatuated with the next shiny thing in the sport, the dominating nature of Anders Mol remains unchanged.
2023 MVP: Ondrej Perusic
2024 MVP: David Ahman
David Ahman is the 2025 Defensive Player of the Year/Volleyball World photo
Best Defensive Player: David Ahman
Honorable Mention
- Ahmed Tijan, Qatar
- Arthur Lanci, Brazil
- Clemens Wickler, Germany
- Yorick de Groot, Netherlands
It still doesn’t make sense to Marco Krattiger, how David Ahman moves.
“I’ve never seen a guy going for a cut shot and then realize it’s a line shot coming and change direction — like, where’s your weight?” he said on a recent episode of SANDCAST. “It has to carry you! It’s not how physics works!”
Ahman evidently cares little about physics. Even during what was the “worst” year of his and Jonatan Hellvig’s still-young careers, with just two gold medals and three total medals — granted, they made one of those golds a biggie, a World Championship title — Ahman was still the runaway winner for Defensive Player of the Year for the second consecutive year.
It actually speaks to just how elite Ahman is on the defensive side of the ball that in what is a relative down year for Sweden, he instills so much fear and respect from his opponents on offense. How he performs on defense correlates directly to how Sweden finishes a tournament. Their two gold medals, in Ostrava and the World Championships?
He led the tournament in digs in both.
2023 Best Defensive Player: Ondrej Perusic
2024 Best Defensive Player: David Ahman
Anders Mol is the 2025 Offensive Player of the Year/Volleyball World photo
Best Offensive Player: Anders Mol
Honorable Mention
- David Ahman, Sweden
- Cherif Younousse, Qatar
- Jacob Holting-Nilsson, Sweden
One of the most inconvenient aspects of Anders Mol winning the Offensive Player of the Year? Finding a picture of him…on offense.
Try for yourself. The only photos you’ll find of Mol are of him serving, celebrating, or blocking — because nobody in their right mind willingly gives him the ball. He received only 488 total serves this year, just 25 percent of Norway’s total offense.
Why?
Because he sided out on 72 percent of those opportunities, and added another 61 percent in transition. This compared to his opponents’ 62 percent sideout rate and a paltry 40 percent transition rate. Of those side outs, 64 percent came on the first ball — a full 14 percent higher than his opponents.
How did those numbers compare to the final nominees for this award?
Mol was two percent better in sideout than David Ahman, and 16 percent more efficient in transition.
Cherif Younousse actually led the Beach Pro Tour in sideout percent at 78 — but was 12 percent lower in transition than Mol.
Jacob Holting-Nilsson finished 69 percent in sideout and 56 percent in transition, both lower than Mol’s totals.
2023 Best Offensive Player: Anders Mol
2024 Best Offensive Player: Anders Mol
Anders Mol is the 2025 Blocker of the Year/Volleyball World photo
Best Blocker: Anders Mol
Honorable Mention
- Stefan Boermans, Netherlands
- Jacob Holting-Nilsson, Sweden
- Jonatan Hellvig, Sweden
- Remi Bassereau, France
When Anders Mol and Christian Sorum won another gold medal at the Hamburg Elite, Kyle Friend and I discussed on Beach Access that Norway, now five wins behind Ricardo and Emanuel for tops all-time, had gone “GOAT Hunting.”
But Mol, at 28, continues to make a stronger and stronger case that he is no longer GOAT Hunting for the title of best blocker of all time — he might already have it.
For the fifth time in his career, Mol has been voted by his peers as the Blocker of the Year. The men he is chasing — Alison Cerutti, Ricardo Santos, Phil Dalhausser — combined to win it nine times, and seven of those are coming from Dalhausser. When Dalhausser was 28, he had been named Blocker of the Year three times (2006, 2007, 2008).
Even Dalhausser already tips his cap to Mol as the greatest blocker to ever live, and Mol is still seven years from what Dalhausser describes as a beach volleyball player’s prime age: 35. The Thin Beast wouldn’t win his final Blocker of the Year award until 2017, when he was 37 years old and winning three gold medals with Nick Lucena.
What a frightening prospect that is, that Mol, already owner of five Blocker of the Year awards, two Olympic medals, a World Championship gold, and five European Championships, doesn’t just have seven years left — he’s seven years away from peaking.
Let that sink in.
2023 Best Blocker: Anders Mol
2024 Best Blocker: Anders Mol
Evandro Goncalves is the 2025 Beach Pro Tour Server of the Year/Volleyball World photo
Best Server: Evandro Goncalves
Honorable Mention
- Anders Mol, Norway
- James Shaw, USA
- Yorick de Groot, Netherlands
In the three years that SANDCAST has been hosting the Beach Pro Tour Player Awards, never has there been a category won by the margin in which Evandro was voted the 2025 Server of the Year.
Accumulating more than 80 percent of the votes, it was the most dominating performance of any individual, of any category — even more than Anders Mol and blocking or… Evandro in the past eight consecutive years in which he has won this award.
He led Brasilia in aces (by 7), Gstaad (by 4), Montreal (by 2, even though he finished ninth), Newport (by 2), World Championships in Adelaide (by 6), and Itapema (by 3) and finished second in Joao Pessoa, second in Rio despite playing only four matches, and second in Hamburg despite playing only four matches. If there’s a critique about Evandro’s serving, it’s that he misses a lot and can be, at times, inconsistent. But then you look at those numbers, and there’s nothing inconsistent about him.
He is, simply, the greatest server of all time.
2023 Best Server: Evandro Goncalves
2024 Best Server: Evandro Goncalves
Jacob Holting-Nilsson is the 2025 Beach Pro Tour Most Improved/Volleyball World photo
Most Improved: Jacob Holting-Nilsson
Honorable Mention
- Elmer Andersson, Sweden
- Calvin Aye, France
- Teo Rotar, France
Yes, Jacob Holting-Nilsson and Elmer Andersson won two straight Challenge events, in Chennai, India, and Nuvali, Philippines, to end the 2024 Beach Pro Tour season. But it was still fair to wonder: Did they have what it took to beat Elite teams in the summer, and not watered-down fields in Asia at the end of the year?
For seven months, the answer was, mostly, no.
In their first five Challenge and Elite events of the season, Holting-Nilsson and Andersson struggled, posting just one finish in the top-13. They dropped to as low as the 15 seed in Challenge events — and finished worse than their seed, swallowing a 17th in Stare Jablonki, Poland.
All it takes, however, is a single event, one galvanizing run to ignite one of the most impressive seasons in recent memory. That came in Gstaad, when Andersson and Holting-Nilsson vaulted from the reserve list to the finals and used the remainder of the season as a convincing case to be considered the best team in beach volleyball — which they became, as voted by their peers.
What was it? It takes two in this sport, and Andersson was tremendous, finishing No. 2 in the voting for Most Improved. But no player improved at a quicker rate than Holting-Nilsson, who ascended the ranks as one of the most formidable blockers not named Anders Mol, became the best option player on the planet, one of the most feared offensive players, period, and has taken the subjective title of Best Setter. It was Holting-Nilsson who was sensational during a World Championships finals in which he was the best player on the court, even in a match he lost.
And it is Jacob Holting-Nilsson who was voted as the Most Improved Player of 2025.
2023 Most Improved: Miles Partain
2024 Most Improved: Nils Ehlers
Jacob Holting-Nilsson is the 2025 Beach Pro Tour Rookie of the Year/Volleyball World photo
Rookie of the Year: Jacob Holting-Nilsson
Honorable Mention
- Elmer Andersson, Sweden
- Tim Berger, Austria
- Teo Rotar, France
It was easy to forget, that Jacob Holting-Nilsson was a rookie in 2025. How can one possibly explain his cool during their indelible run, from the reserve list to the gold medal match, in Gstaad? How can one think he’s a rookie when he stuns David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig in the Montreal semifinals and acts as if it’s simply another victory, when in reality, it’s a victory he’s never before enjoyed? How can he claim to be a freshman on this Beach Pro Tour, as talented and deep as it’s ever been, while making it to the finals of his maiden World Championships, playing better than anyone in the tournament?
And yet, Holting-Nilsson is just 20 years old. This year was his first playing in an Elite event. His first playing more than two Challenges. His first World Championships.
His first everything.
It is a bummer for the rest of the rookies — including his own partner, Elmer Andersson, who finished third in the voting, behind Teo Rotar — that they timed their debut season with Holting-Nilsson.
Nobody was matching the pace he put on in his rookie year.
2023 Rookie of the Year: Miles Partain
2024 Rookie of the Year: Kristians Fokerots
Ondrej Perusic is the 2023 Beach Pro Tour Sportsmanship Award winner/Volleyball World photo
Sportsmanship Award: Ondrej Perusic
Honorable Mention
- Arthur Lanci, Brazil
- Stefan Boermans, Netherlands
- Christian Sorum, Norway
- David Schweiner, Czech Republic
For some, it takes becoming a father to become humble enough to be decent to all those around you. This was never the case with Ondrej Perusic. He won the 2023 Sportsmanship Award in the same year in which he was voted MVP, Best Defensive Player, and Team of the Year.
If you can remain one of the finest human beings on the Beach Pro Tour in a year in which you win all of that, how much humbler can you really get?
Turns out, even more so, as Perusic, whose won was born two weeks before the Ostrava Elite, was again voted by his peers as the winner of the Sportsmanship Award.
He and David Schweiner, another nominee in 2025, are the first to call their own touches. They are the first to have reasonable conversations with the referees. They are unfailingly kind to the volunteers and staff. Win or lose, they are gracious against their competitors. They have welcoming conversations on shuttles to the venue and in passing between matches.
There are few better men in this sport than Ondrej Perusic.
2023 Sportsmanship Award: Ondrej Perusic
2024 Sportsmanship Award: Paolo Nicolai
Adelaide, host of the World Championships, is the 2025 Event of the Year/Volleyball World photo
Event of the Year: World Championships, Adelaide, Australia
Honorable Mention
- Ostrava Elite
- Gstaad Elite
- Joao Pessoa Elite
- Montreal Elite
On the second day of the World Championships, the staff at Beach Volleyball World was bored.
Bored because there were no fires to put out. Bored because everything was going so smoothly.
Bored because Adelaide, and the wonderful hosts of the tournament, had done such a tremendous job in the setup, operations, and organization of the event that there were no problems to fix, no hiccups to cure, nothing to solve.
It was a perfectly organized and run event.
It is an understatement of gargantuan proportions to say that hosting the World Championships is a massive undertaking, and an even bigger risk. Here you have the biggest event not named the Olympic Games, hosting 96 total teams from all continents and cultures and languages, hauling in staff, referees, TV, media, and everything else that goes into putting on a world class sporting event. And not a single thing went wrong.
Not only that, but the place sold out its final three days of competition, creating the electric atmosphere you see above, with 6,500 fans packing the house three straight nights. The evening atmosphere was excellent all 10 days, and the only complaint from the players came from the Australians themselves, who apologized profusely “for the shit weather, mate” — when the weather was a perfectly acceptable sunny and breezy with the occasional spattering of wind and rain.
In other words, they were apologizing for beach volleyball weather.
You could say it’s easy to make the World Championships the event of the year, but I’d argue it’s even easier to flop, as it is the event with the most eyeballs, the most pressure, the most financial risk.
Adelaide did not flop, not even a little, which is why it was the runaway 2025 Event of the Year.
2023 Event of the Year: World Championships, Tlaxcala, Mexico
2024 Event of the Year: Paris Olympic Games
