Secrets of Coaching Success: Jetmund Berntsen (Part 1)

There are many important differences between the jobs of a volleyball coach and a beach volleyball coach, but what they certainly have in common is their key role in a team’s success. To help the fans understand that role and gain more in-depth knowledge about what it takes to be a successful coach from the first-hand source, I present some of Europe’s accomplished examples in the coaching profession from both disciplines and try to pick their brains for insider info in my Secrets of Coaching Success series.

In the seventh episode of my series, I introduce one of today’s most successful coaches in the world of beach volleyball. He is one of the people behind Anders Mol & Christian Sorum’s success and that says enough, but let’s find out more about Jetmund Berntsen, the coach of the reigning world and Olympic champions from Norway.

Born in 1973, Jetmund was the second of five siblings, all of whom eventually became national team players in volleyball and/or beach volleyball. The oldest one, Merita, now better known as Anders Mol’s mom, was the most successful athlete among the five. She represented Norway at the Atlanta 1996 beach event with a ninth-place result.

Young Jetmund enjoyed ball games as a kid, especially football in the summer time and volleyball in the winter time, among many other sports. Following in his older sister’s footsteps, he got involved with organized volleyball when he was seven years old. When he was 17, he also started playing beach volleyball in the summer.

His interest in beach volleyball was also influenced by his indoor national team teammate Jan Kvalheim, who was an internationally renowned professional beach volleyballer at the time as well, and mostly by his brother-in-law, Merita’s husband Kare Mol. The two formed a team and even won a national championship bronze in 1995. Berntsen also played at a couple of FIVB World Tour events, the 1997 Marseille Open and the 1999 Stavanger Open. His career as an indoor player peaked about a decade later, when he won the Norwegian national title and national cup with the team of Forde.

Merita Mol’s journey to the Atlanta Olympics with her husband Kare Mol in the coaching role inspired Berntsen’s interest in coaching himself. They raised their children together and spent a lot of time together, during which Jetmund could follow Kare closely, get his questions answered and try things out as he was getting his coaching career started.

All of the Mols’ five and the Berntsens’ two kids eventually got involved in the sport, so beach volleyball became a family business, the Beachvolley Vikings. It started in 2016 with three players – Kare’s son Anders Mol and Jetmund’s son Mathias Berntsen, who had already won their first important international competition as a team, the 2015 CEV U20 European Championship, as well as the “adopted” Christian Sorum.

The young Vikings’ achievements kept coming. Anders Mol won the continental U20 title again in 2016 along with Christian Sorum’s younger brother Aleksander. Later that year he won the U22 title along with Christian and, in 2017, he took the U22 silver with Mathias Berntsen. That year Anders also earned his first international podiums at the senior level, a Ljubljana Masters gold on the CEV European Tour with Christian and an Espinho two-star bronze on the FIVB World Tour with Mathias.

For the BeachVolley Vikings, it was still a testing period, when Jetmund Berntsen and the rest of their coaching staff were trying different combinations of players. Soon they realized that Anders and Christian read the game in the same way and had an amazing chemistry between them enough to take the sport up to a whole new level.

Mol & Sorum’s major breakthrough came in 2018, when they won five top-level events in a row: the Gstaad five-star, the CEV European Championship in the Hague, the Vienna five-star, the World Tour Finals in Hamburg and the Las Vegas four-star. Their fairy-tale journey had begun.

In 2019, Mol & Sorum took another six gold medals out of the seven World Tour finals they reached. The Vikings also claimed bronze at the FIVB World Championship in Hamburg and at the World Tour Finals in Rome. They became World Tour season champions in both 2018 and 2019. To their already impressive tally, they added two more back-to-back European titles, at Moscow 2019 and Jurmala 2020.

2021 was another big year for the Beachvolley Vikings. For Mol & Sorum it started with back-to-back four-star titles on the World Tour and peaked with the Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. They followed that up with their fourth consecutive EuroBeachVolley title at the tournament in Vienna and gold at the last edition of the World Tour Finals in Cagliari.

It was time for Kare Mol to step back and let Jetmund Berntsen take the leading role in their coaching team. And the success story continued in 2022. The inaugural season of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour was marked by Mol & Sorum’s three Elite16 gold medals, but for them the culmination came at the World Championship in Rome, where they added the world title to their glorious showcase. After their success at the Paris Elite16 in October, the pair reclaimed the number one spot in the FIVB World Ranking and have occupied it ever since.

Mol & Sorum finished “only” third at EuroBeachVolley 2022 in Munich, thus interrupting their amazing series of four continental titles in a row, while the CEV BeachVolley Nations Cup in Vienna was another highlight for the Beachvolley Vikings in 2022. With Jetmund Berntsen as the head coach of the Norwegian men’s national team (Anders Mol, Christian Sorum, Hendrik Mol, Mathias Berntsen), they triumphed on top of the podium at the inaugural event.

The pairing of Mathias Berntsen with Anders’s older brother Hendrik Mol also had a good year on the Beach Pro Tour. They claimed silver at the Agadir Challenge and eventually finished the year as number 13 in the World Ranking.

Jetmund Berntsen’s coaching success has not been limited to the men’s department only. At the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games, he led Emilie Olimstad and his daughter Frida Berntsen to the bronze medals.

Since 2018 Jetmund Berntsen has also been working at the ToppVolley Norge private boarding school, a dream establishment, where volleyball and beach volleyball talents combine high school education with athletic training.

Full interview: Secrets of Coaching Success: Jetmund Berntsen (Part 2)

Previous episode:
Secrets of Coaching Success: Aigars Birzulis