The Volleyball DNA: Raisa Schoon
Editorial
Beach volleyball has been played in the last seven editions of the Olympic Games. The Netherlands were represented by members of the same family in five of them and that number is just about to get higher as the last to do it, Raisa Schoon, turned 20 and will have at least a few more chances to return to the greatest stage of international sports.
Raisa’s mother, Debora, was the one who started the family tradition in Atlanta 1996, even before her daughter was born. She returned to the Games in Sydney 2000, which was the final tournament of her playing career, but paved the way for her family to continue its streak by having her younger sister Rebekka as her partner.
The strategy worked and Rebekka went to compete in three straight Olympics, but after Beijing 2008, when she had Debora as her coach, her results dropped and the family wasn’t represented in London 2012 or Rio 2016.
That started to change with Raisa’s rapid rise in the volleyball scene. Coached by her mother, the defender had always been a precious talent in the country, winning national titles in every age group at the beginning of her career.
However, it was still a little bit of a surprise when she won the CEV Continental Cup alongside partner Katja Stam to become the youngest female player to qualify for the Olympics at the age of 19. A few months later, the two went to win the silver medal at the 2021 EuroBeachVolley in Vienna.
Debora Schoon-Kadijk“I see a lot of myself in Raisa, especially the desire to keep getting better. But she handles the ball a lot better than I did and has an incredible ability to read the game. She started playing beach earlier than I did and is already a better player than I was.”
Former Dutch Beach Volleyball Player
Debora no longer coaches Raisa, but the family connection remains there as the Dutch national team head coach is her uncle Richard de Kogel, who’s married to Rebekka. But the lessons learned over the year, even before she started playing, but got to watch her mother’s training sessions, will never be forgotten.
Raisa Schoon“We don’t need many words to understand each other. And even though she’s no longer my coach, I always hear her voice in the back of my mind when I’m on the court and it helps me in making decisions. It’s really special to be following in her footsteps and accomplishing some of the things she did in her career.”
Dutch Beach Volleyball Player
Volleyball is a true family sport. Not only because of the friendly environment found in indoor and beach tournaments around the world, but also due to the simplicity of the game, which allows people of all ages and physical abilities to play it. It’s also a captivating sport and because of that it happens often that several generations of a same family fall in love with it. Every once in a while, we can see those family connections at the professional level and that’s exactly what we’re going to show in our series ‘The Volleyball DNA’.