Beach Volleyball

Szymon Tralka moved to California in 2013 after playing beach volleyball for the first time in 2012 where he competed in MPVA tournaments in Michigan.  He wanted more competition and more time to train on the beach.  California seemed to be the best choice not only because of the ideal weather conditions all year round to train outside, but also because of the best volleyball competition in the United States.  He found a great coach, Eduardo Anjihno Bacil – Brazilian Champion.  In 2014, he competed in Parana, Argentina in his first FIVB event with Tomasz Gortych.  The duo ended up in the Main Draw. Few months later, the team parted ways.  Unfortunately, due to personal reasons, Tomasz Gortych could no longer compete and Szymon was fortunate enough to find another great player:  Marcin Jagoda, to compete with and represent Poland in the international competitions.

Marcin Jagoda – born and raised in California has a dual citizenship; Polish and American.  Additionally, he has an extensive experience playing indoor volleyball on the highest level (played overseas in four different countries, won NCAA Championship with UCLA) and most importantly had great experience playing Beach Volleyball.  Not only he competed on the AVP circuit, but also represented United States of America in NORCECA games with his best career finish of 3rd.

Szymon contacted Marcin for the first time via Facebook in May of 2015.  Duo decided to play couple tournaments without training together, (CBVA and NVL).  However, Szymon has one goal in mind and that’s competing at the highest level.  For the past three years, he has dreamed about representing Poland internationally.  Once, Szymon saw a chance to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing Beach Volleyball at the highest level, it was not too difficult and it did not take much time to persuade Marcin to come out of retirement and join the team.

They started to prepare for their first international FIVB tournament in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  “We trained everyday starting at 530 am spending 3.5 hours at the beach, but we had practices that lasted 6 hours at the time.  We knew we had very limited amount of time to get ready.”

They could say they did not do well in Mexico losing to the Canadian team in the first round of qualification.  They also could say they did really well.  They lost their match 2:0 (19, 15).  “It was not a bad loss for us – Marcin says.  For the amount of given training together and playing much more experienced Canadian team, we should have not get as many points as we did.  There is hope for us.  Time we spent together was our worse enemy.  Or I should say lack of it.”