Durant Sets Sights on Tokyo 2020

Western Australian beach volleyballer Cole Durant and partner Zachary Schubert will this weekend compete in the Queensland Open with the hopes of setting in to motion a plan to qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

After not qualifying a men’s beach volleyball partnership for either of the past two Olympic Games Durant believes that Australia must adopt a more unorthodox playing style in order to break the cycle.

He said “we are pushing for an unorthodox, exciting and risky game style.”

“We are trying to use only two contacts as much as possible, compared to the usual three, and then also trying to bring jump setting to the beach.”

The newly formed partnership have already has a successful start tot he summer, winning the NSW Open and coming second in the SA Open earlier this month.

Hoping to continue their successful run Durant said “I personally believe that our game style is something that will help us qualify for 2020.”

“If we try to play classic old school volleyball against seven-foot giants we will be in trouble. I believe we need to think out of the box and throw the whole world off.”

In correlation with adopting a new game style, Durant also hopes that he will be able to bring some of his past experience to the team.

He spent the past year playing with 39-year-old beach volleyball veteran, Bo Soderberg where he said that “I got to soak up some of Bo’s wit and craftiness. The guy is a winner and is a very good problem solver in regards to volleyball, which was really useful to be around.”

The Queensland Open is scheduled to begin today at Surfers Paradise, where finals will be played on Sunday.

 Here the duo will take on the experienced pairing of Damian Schumann and Joshua Court who won every national title in the 2016 Summer season.