22 Jul 2024
Volleyball England's Pitman heads to Paris bidding to strike gold in coaching role
The New Zealander – whose wife Zara represented GB at the London 2012 Olympics – now lives on the English South Coast and splits his time between working for the national governing body and coaching German pairing Svenja Müller and Cinja Tillmann.
It means, on Wednesday, Kirk will fly out to France to join up with his players as they bid their bid for Olympic glory in a beach tournament that will start on Saturday, 27th July to Sunday 10th August.
Ranked ninth in the world, his charges are certainly a team who have a realistic chance of standing on top of the rostrum come the end of the competition.
Those hopes were given a timely boost when Müller and Tillmann won the final Beach Pro Tour Elite 16 event, in Vienna, before the focus turns to Paris.
Kirk hopes the confidence gleaned from that success can help propel the duo to even greater things when competing in the French capital.
“One of the things that can be really important going into Olympics is to go in with momentum, although you can build it up during the course of the tournament as it is going on for a while,” he said.
“Winning those games and the Elite 16 event has certainly built confidence because up until then the girls had had a season where they had played well, but not necessarily got the results.
“They had three fifth places and been and close to making the semi-finals on a couple of occasions, but they needed a good result to convince themselves they were in a good place and now they have that.
“They will be going for the gold medal and while they are not the number one pair, if they are performing well then they can beat anyone – as they have done in the past.
“All you hope for as a coach, and what would be a success in my eyes, is if the girls are in a good place and can play freely and express themselves.
“The hard work has already been done in their training and preparation and now you just hope they can go out and show the world what they can do.”
This Olympics will be Kirk’s second Olympics, having helped Australians Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar to the silver medal at Tokyo 2020.
He is expecting this experience to be completely different, not least because his time in Japan came during the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic.
Kirk said: “The first time you get there... that’s everyone’s dream and what you always work towards, but this time I go in with more experience. I know what to expect and I’m a lot calmer about it all.
“It’s also going to be great to have my family there to experience it with me, my kids, which was never going to happen last time because of the Pandemic.
“It was strange getting to an Olympic final, yet no-one was in the stands to see it! This time things will be a lot different with the crowd coming into play.”
Kirk is keen to use the experience, as he did in Tokyo, to further develop his coaching attributes and strategic thinking on the game.
He hopes he can use some of that knowledge in his Volleyball England role, where he is helping to get the best out of the generations of talent currently coming through the system.
The end of last year saw several Beach Volleyball Development Centres opened across the country, which is intended to help improve the standard of competition domestically and, in turn, on the international scene.
Kirk has played a central role in helping to set them up and has been visiting those venues this summer in a bid to help each of them develop their programmes for young players.
“You can learn a heck of a lot from the big events like this and it helps you keep your finger on the pulse about what is happening in the game and what you need to be successful and stay at the top,” he said.
“You can see what certain type of characteristics players need and how the top ones are going about their business, things you cannot see unless you are there in amongst it.
“There are things I can take that can help coach and support the athletes we have here in England and the vision that is needed to reach the top, which you can gradually look to put into practice.
“The aspiration is to get English pairings to the Olympics in 2028 and, if we do things in the right way, you think ‘why can’t it happen?’”
While out in Paris, Kirk is hoping to catch up with a few familiar faces, some of them from England, some of them from further afield that he has come to know during his time in the sport.
“I believe Lucy Boulton, who played for England and GB is going to be there, so I will catch up with her, as well as Andy Jones who, of course, used to work for Volleyball England in the beach programme.
“I’m sure there will be others I bump into to – it's always the case that you run into people – so it’s a tournament I’m looking forward to all round.”
Main image: @connykurth
