Perhaps a global perspective isn’t a prerequisite for winning a world championship. Maybe an athlete doesn’t need to contemplate much of anything beyond those 128 square meters of sand to succeed within its borders.
But interest in a world beyond the sand is a prerequisite for being Tina Graudina, no less than as an impressive vertical jump and a fully charged Kindle. Which is why her road to the upcoming FIVB World Championships in Adelaide, Australia, passed beneath the streets of Manhattan. For nearly four months this past fall and winter, alongside the bankers, cooks, nurses and millions of New Yorkers who traverse the subways daily, one of the planet’s most gifted beach volleyball players commuted to her internship with the Permanent Mission of Latvia to the United Nations.
Graudina and longtime beach partner Anastasija Samoilova were the first Latvian women’s team to reach the Olympics (and the first with back-to-back appearances.) Paired by necessity but also providence, they were the first Latvian women to win a European title, then the first, men or women, to win multiple European titles. Near the top of the rankings and perpetually on or around Beach Pro Tour podiums this year, they are among a select few teams for whom a world championship next month wouldn’t be a surprise.
Graudina and Samoilova are seeded No. 5 in Adelaide (Graham Hays photo).
At 27, Graudina has arguably never played better volleyball, buoyed by her indefatigable partner, their new coach and a renewed commitment to test the limits of what she can achieve. It was that last component that she unlocked while taking a break from the sport following the grind of an Olympic cycle. With the Latvian Mission, she leaned on knowledge and skills acquired through multiple degrees and a lifetime of curiosity. She explored a new world, interested to see where it might lead. That it brought her back to the sand doesn’t mean it was a wasted trip. When you’re doing it right, the joy is in the journey.
“I knew I had to take the break—and most probably I will want to keep playing volleyball,” Graudina said of her New York sojourn after the 2024 Olympics and Euros. “But I also gave myself that opportunity that in case I absolutely fell in love with the UN and diplomacy, I would not force myself to go back to beach volleyball. I was open to the idea that I might not play. But I did have a suspicion that, knowing me, I could not give up volleyball.”
A Latvian Worldview
An avid reader growing up, Graudina loved few things more than slipping into the imaginary worlds inhabited by Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen, unlikely heroes who defy the odds. Yet she also grew up in a country that was rarely a protagonist destined to enjoy a happy ending. Latvia’s fate, as she put it, has too often been that of a pawn on the chessboard of empires.
To put it another way, in a small Baltic nation, you learn to think about the world around you because that world is never very far away.
Her mother grew up in Cold War Latvia, long after what was briefly an independent state between World Wars I and II was subsumed into the USSR as one of 15 Soviet republics. Ilze Graudina would occasionally recount stories of being too scared to sleep as a girl, told one too many times that American missiles would strike while she dreamed. Or of trying to wrap her mind around notions of freedom in the weeks and months following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and accelerating independence movements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Tina’s father and his family were refugees from a homeland occupied first by Stalin’s Soviet Union, then Hitler’s Germany and finally the Soviets again. As a boy, Maris Graudins passed through Ellis Island not long before it closed for good in 1954. For decades, even as he earned degrees in the United States and Canada, he lived a dissident émigré’s life. In 1985, he helped organize and lead the Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise, a globally recognized protest action in the Baltic Sea. He returned to Lativa amid the upheaval of 1989-91 and, in addition to marrying Ilze, served in the Saeima, the Latvian parliament.
Their daughter was born in an independent Latvia, part of the first such generation in more than half a century. She grew up with the freedom to read anything she wanted, from hobbits to history. But she also grew up with the inherited experiences of both parents—the intergenerational memories, the academic term helpfully supplied by the volleyball star with political science degrees. In much the same way (if of significantly more consequence) that a parent passes down a rooting interest in a sports team, with all of imbedded elation and misery of its history, her parents passed down an appreciation for the freedom to learn and the responsibility to take nothing for granted.
“My dad dedicated his years as a young adult to fight politically and through public relations to keep the Latvian fighting spirit alive, to keep the Latvian nationality alive,” Graudina said. “I think that has inspired me, and that interest in politics has carried over to me and my siblings—because politics is not something bad. It’s literally the act of how we govern ourselves, how we make our own world and shape it. If we’re not going to take an interest in politics, then we are giving away the control over our own lives.”
If not as visible as the vertical jump, that’s nonetheless part of who she is.
Graudina came to the United States for college because it offered a path forward in beach volleyball. The story has been told enough by now. USC coach Anna Collier spotted her at a youth event, stayed in touch with her dad and, voila, a four-time All-American and three-time Pac-12 Player of the Year. But she had other options. She could have stayed in Latvia and concentrated on the world circuit with Samoilova, the route of many emerging European players to this day. Incompatibility with her coach at the time provided one motivation to cross the ocean. So did the allure of the other part of the university experience.
“Basically, I knew I really wanted to get the smartest diploma that I can get,” Graudina said only slightly in jest.
She left USC with two, a bachelor’s in political science and government and a master’s in communication management with a focus on data analytics.
If you want to see Graudina light up, eager to talk about something, forget about the Euro titles or Olympic adventures. Ask her about the upper-level class on Eastern Europe and Russia that she took as a USC freshman. Or the law course that challenged her mentally as much as any athletic workout did physically—and was just as satisfying as a result. Or the astronomy course, where she marveled at Planck epochs and the quite literally infinitesimal small measurements of time at the beginning of the universe.
Mentally and physically exhausted after the Olympics and the subsequent European Championships, that’s where she went to recharge. Not a tropical island with little paper umbrellas in her drink, but to the comfortably familiar surroundings of intellectual curiosity. In addition to an opportunity to shorten her long-distance relationship with her New York-based boyfriend, she looked forward to adding practical experience to an impressive academic resume. And as the Latvian flag bearer during the Paris Olympics, her name carries some clout on an internship application.
“I knew that I really want to be connected with Latvia and preferably help Latvia in some way,” Graudina said. “And since I studied political science at USC, I knew I wanted to dip my toes into [diplomacy] and see if I like it or not and what it looks like.”
Beach Superstar to Diplomatic Role Player
Graudina’s usual work life involves a lot of long flights, hotels, rentals and work spaces hurriedly thrown together in the days leading up to a tournament (admittedly with some occasionally stunning views). Riding the subway to work and swiping your key card to access an office might not sound like the height of adventure, but everything is relative.
“For me, that was such an exotic thing to do, so new,” Graudina said. “I really enjoyed being in one place, creating these relationships with my colleagues and feeling like I’m a part of a bigger team, not just a two- or three-person team in beach volleyball. That really filled my heart with warmth to feel a part of it and to be just a small gear in this big mechanism.”
Watch: A day in the UN life of Tina Graudina
Some of her tasks were typical intern fare, like scouting out restaurants suitable for dignitaries, including Latvian president Edgars Rinkēvičs. But during the time she was in New York, the Latvian Mission was also in the midst of trying to gain election to the UN Security Council, the 15-member body that includes 10 non-permanent members elected for two-year periods. Ultimately successful, the additional work for her full-time colleagues meant even greater opportunity for Graudina to handle day-to-day responsibilities.
Her internship mirrored the General Assembly’s annual regular session, when the months are filled with hundreds upon hundreds of meetings on just about every topic imaginable. It might be a discussion of climate in the morning and weapons nonproliferation in the afternoon, but whenever called on, Graudina would attend the meetings, take notes and write a summary for the staffer usually responsible for that subject matter.
She enjoyed the camaraderie and collegiality of the Latvian delegation. And if nothing else, it is an undeniably exhilarating time in history to have a front row seat for world events—even if it’s sometimes exhilarating in the same sense as riding an aging roller coaster with a spotty maintenance record. It was also eye opening. Rarely unaware of the news, another trait picked up from her mother, she followed events so closely and in such depth as part of her daily routine—the news not something to skim on the way to work but the essence of work itself—that she eventually took a break from all current events after the internship.
“The emotional intensity that you need to experience when you read the news about Gaza, Ukraine, South Sudan and all these crises, that really made me realize the emotional toll this type of job can take—and even made me question if that is for me in the future,” Graudina said. “But it also made me realize how extremely competent and smart and intelligent these people are who do these type of jobs. Just like I have cultivated my expertise in beach volleyball through many, many years of work, they are experts in their field. And it was very inspiring to see people who are so competent, confident and smart.”
It was their world. It may yet be hers one day—or something adjacent to it. But not yet.
Graudina and Samoilova have Tour wins in Nuvali in 2023 and Recife in 2024 (Graham Hays photo).
The Journey Continues
She stayed active in New York. She played pickleball and tennis, ran and swam—even made a point of taking the stairs at every opportunity (no small feat in Manhattan). But she didn’t return to volleyball until December, when the UN pace slowed and she reunited with Samoilova to win bronze at the Tour Finals in Doha, Qatar.
Before she stepped away after the Olympics and Euros, her tank on empty, there were moments when volleyball started to feel like work. Not always. Never fully. But there. As she said, while leaving the door open for anything, she was self-aware enough to know she would likely come back to volleyball after the break at the UN. So, looking ahead, she thought about taking it easy in 2025, even if she didn’t know quite what that meant. Play half as many events? Train half as often? The options didn’t seem particularly practical.
She didn’t need them. Coming off the bronze in Doha, and as she and Samoilova worked with new coach Daniel Rodriguez Wood, she found her tank full again. She found energy in new challenges, from incorporating jump setting to mastering a spin serve or how she moves her arms when she’s blocking. If she’s learning and growing, she’s content.
“I feel this churning fire and motivation where I really want to become the best player that I can be and push myself to the very limit in every single area where I can still improve,” Graudina said. “I wanted to let my fear go and just try everything that I haven’t tried yet.”
Hardly spendthrift, to the point of packing her own lunches in New York, Graudina nonetheless laments how much of her disposable income is directed toward her Kindle. The temptation is just too great when new books are only a click away. She tries to exercise quality control, if not quantity control. Still enamored with fantasy worlds, she matches each fiction title with a title where she will “learn something that makes me smarter.” In recent months, she read Mark Blyth’s Austerity on financial austerity and European Union missteps in the 2008 Euro Crisis, as well as Richard V. Reeves’ Of Boys and Men about the developmental challenges for that gender in modern society.
There is power in understanding the world around us. Knowledge solves problems—it can help a country like Latvia survive and thrive. But there is power in imagination and inspiration, too, in the fictional worlds of novels and characters who discover hidden and marvelous talents. After taking a break in one world, Graudina was ready to return to the other, the one where she and Samoilova can leave schoolkids speechless when they visit classrooms, shine a spotlight on important issues and lift the profile of a country many would struggle to identify on a map. It’s where she wants to be for now. It’s who she is.
“I feel it in my heart that even if I don’t get a single medal for the rest of my life, as long as I feel the same way that I feel right now when I practice, when I play volleyball, I’m happy with this type of life,” Graudina said. “I feel so happy, so full with positive emotions—even when we lose, that anger of losing is directed in a positive direction.
“I really believe that the journey is so important to enjoy and also do properly. Because if you enjoy it and you put all your effort in it, the destination, the medals, they will come by themselves. That’s something that I’m focusing on this year and hopefully every single year from now on.”
