On Monday, the nitpicking could begin.
That’s when the coach of David Schweiner and Ondrej Perusic is alas allowed to break down the film and point out, as Schweiner said on a hot and breezy Sunday afternoon in Mexico, all the areas of improvement for the Czech pair.
Good luck, coach.
It won’t be easy to find the flaws.
Indeed, it is only nits that can possibly be picked at when trying to find anything to improve upon from Perusic and Schweiner’s 2025 debut during this weekend’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Yucatan Challenge.
After a somewhat listless and injury-riddled 2024 season, which saw Perusic and Schweiner’s prize money take a $60,000 hit from their spectacular, World Championship-winning 2023, Perusic and Schweiner have resumed their formidable form. This week in Mexico, they didn’t so much as drop a single set. Of the 10 sets they played, only three came within two points, while half of them were decided by six or more.
“It’s a paradise beginning,” Schweiner said.
Indeed it is, although it does, in the Czech coach’s defense, bear noting that Schweiner and Perusic were gifted a forfeit against Brazilians George and Saymon, and their final three matches came against teams seeded No. 24 (Arnaud Gauthier-Rat and Teo Rotar, France’s new top pairing), No. 23 (Hugo Campos and Joao Pedrosa, the eventual bronze medalists of Portugal) and No. 26 (Yves Haussener and Julian Friedli, the Swiss Cinderellas who came out of the qualifier). Was it the stiffest competition?
Not by any means.
Does that matter?
Not at all.
“If you look at the score it may look it was quite easy, but it was not,” Perusic, the 2023 MVP of the Beach Pro Tour, said. “These guys played an amazing tournament. They were a tough opponent. They know how to play in the wind, so we had to be really careful in every set and play our game.”
The win is, oddly enough, given their stature as one of the top teams on the planet, a critical one for entry points. Perusic and Schweiner only cracked the main draw in this upcoming week’s Elite16 in Quintana Roo by virtue of the expanded field, where 16 are directly in as opposed to 12. The work, then, is far from over. One more top finish in Mexico will put them back in the position the beach volleyball world has long recognized them: A top-10 team in the world.
“I cannot imagine a better start to the season,” Schweiner said. “Of course, there are still plenty of weak spots in our game, but winning the first tournament of the season is like a paradise beginning.”
Joaoa Pedrosa, Hugo Campos win much-needed bronze
A paradise beginning, too, for Joao Pedrosa and Hugo Campos, the Portuguese pair who hadn’t won a medal since a shocking gold at the Edmonton Challenge nearly two years ago. Like the Czech Republic, 2024 had been a mostly listless season for Portugal, with only two ninth-place finishes in 11 events marking their high.
But they were brilliant in Yucatan, stunning top-seeded Cubans Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz, 21-19, 21-14 in the quarterfinals and then rebounding from a semifinal loss to Perusic and Schweiner to win a thriller for bronze, 21-12, 14-21, 21-19 over Austrians Chris Dressler and Philipp Waller.
