The Volleyball DNA: Markus Mol
Editorial
It’s common for those involved in international beach volleyball to refer to the community that forms the sport as a big family. That term, however, couldn’t be more appropriate to describe a certain Norwegian clan that has been dominating the sport over the last few years.
Tokyo Olympic champion Anders Mol, who earlier this year won his fourth-straight EuroBeachVolley title, might be the face of his family in beach volleyball, but he’s certainly not alone. His older brother, Hendrik, plays with their cousin, Mathias Berntsen, and both teams are coached by Anders’ and Hendrik’s father, Kare, who won the CEV Beach Volleyball Coach of the Year award in 2019 and 2021. Their mother, Merita, who’s frequently part of their staff, has also played professionally and represented Norway at the Atlanta Olympics.
The Beach Volley Vikings’ traveling party is set to increase in the near future and Markus Mol, another of Anders’ brothers, is the next in line to join it. Now aged 19, he has already started to compete internationally and took the silver medal in this year’s CEV U20 European Championship.
Markus Mol“My whole family plays volleyball and it is something normal that I have played it all my life, but I also have played football for a long time, until my 7th grade, when I seriously started playing volleyball and joined competitions as well. For now, I will try to play more World Tour events to gain experience and as many ranking points as possible and we will see where this will take me.”
Norwegian Beach Volleyball Player
Despite his young age, Markus has already won his first World Tour medal, a silver in Oslo, in 2019, when he paired with Anders’ regular partner, Christian Sørum, and lost to his brother and Nils Ringoen in the gold medal match.
Anders Mol“He’s got huge potential. And being a lefty, it brings new opportunities for him. He really wants to compete like we do and maybe he’s even going to steal my partner one day. He’s really talented, as are our younger brother and younger sister, and I’m really looking forward to traveling with them and having them competing internationally in a couple of years because they definitely have the potential to do that.”
Norwegian Olympic Champion
When Markus is fully integrated to his family routine in international beach volleyball, it will be time for Adrian, 16, and Sofia, 15, to go through the same process. As Anders typically says, it seems that when it comes to the Mol family and beach volleyball, it’s #OnlyTheBeginning.
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’.