Belgium’s Beach Volleyball pioneers Koekelkoren and van Walle announce retirement
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Dries Koekelkoren and Tom van Walle have announced the end of their professional Beach Volleyball careers after securing a sixth national title. For six years, they travelled the world as professional Beach Volleyball players, making it as high as to no. 12 in the FIVB World Ranking.
Their last official match coincided with the final of the Belgian national championship on August 15, 2021. Since 2015, they contested international competitions with major highlights such as their victory at the CEV Masters in Baden, a 4th place at the European Championship in Jurmala, a first FIVB medal at the 3-Star tournament in Qinzhou – before earlier this summer they claimed top honours from the 1-Star event held on home sand in Leuven.
Dries Koekelkoren and Tom van Walle“We would like to work with the federation to preserve our knowledge and experience gained in recent years. For us it is essential that the initiatives we have set up together and the path we have taken with Beach Volleyball have a lasting legacy. Therefore, we wish to continue to work together on this.”
“We can best label ourselves as pioneers for Belgian men’s Beach Volleyball,” says Tom van Walle. “It was a journey with ups and downs but it was just very exciting to prove ourselves and to get on that big stage. We did that several times by defeating strong teams, including winning at the World Championship against Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen. I look back with great pride at how we have always supported each other at all times.”
Van Walle does not want to make any hasty statements about what the future holds: “I hope that I can share my experience with people who feel the same passion for Beach Volleyball. Who knows, maybe after Van Breedam/Mouha in 2008, there will be another Belgian team at the Olympics, and if I can contribute to that, that would be a great victory! I also have my degree in Physical Education and maybe I can do something with that. On Tuesday, August 31, I will leave for the U18 European Championships in Slovenia as a coach to support the Belgian teams.”
Dries Koekelkoren looks back on the course taken with a smile.
Dries Koekelkoren“Tom and I surprisingly became the Belgian champions in our first season together in 2009, and that is something I will never forget. We did not become pros until 2015 though. A year later, we were two points away from competing in the Rio Olympics. When we got a professional contract from Sport Vlaanderen and support from the Belgian Olympic Committee in 2018, it gave us a real boost.”
“I have always said that our project does not stand or fall on reaching the Olympics and I still think the same about that today. In recent years, Beach Volleyball has evolved tremendously in Belgium. There is now a top sports school for Beach Volleyball in Leuven, there are specific coaching courses and the federation rolled out initiatives such as Start2Beachvolley. As ambassadors for the sport, we have contributed to this and can rightly be proud of it.”
For national coach Michiel van der Kuip this is also the end of his Belgian adventure. He returns to Beach Team Netherlands, where he will once again be the national coach of the men’s teams.
Michiel van der Kuip“I look back with great satisfaction and pride on the project we started together in 2017. The federation offered us all opportunities to grow as a team. Unfortunately, we did not achieve the intended main result, the Olympics. Dries and Tom gave 100% at every training session and it was a privilege for me to be able to work with two passionate players like them,”