HERMOSA BEACH, California — For five minutes or so, Ben O’Dea and Brad Fuller spoke on the slow, agonizing rise of Patrikas Stankevicius and Audrius Knasas.
Lithuania’s top beach volleyball team was clearly talented, having won Futures events in Slovenia, Poland and Hungary. They’d qualified for a Challenge in Morocco and an Elite16 in Paris. But something was still missing, an element that put a ceiling on their confidence, which should, given their level of play, be unquestioned.
The Big Win.
“You see that so often with World Tour teams at that Futures or Challenge level where you get one good result, and all of a sudden you have that confidence that you can compete with these guys, and then that becomes your standard,” said O’Dea, the 32-year-old who, alongside his brother, Sam, has long been the face of the New Zealand program. “So many teams are chasing that one result and then you get that confidence, you start training with the better teams in the tournaments, you start creeping up in the qualifiers, you get a main draw or two.”
There was a shared look of recognition as the same thought dawned Fuller and O’Dea: Though they were speaking about Lithuania, who in 2024 is now firmly in the mix of main draw Challenge level teams and have landed several signature wins, they could have just as easily been speaking about themselves.
Oh.
“I feel like that’s been us the last couple of tournaments,” Fuller said, laughing. “We keep losing 16-14 to top 20, top 30 teams. That’s what we’ve been observing from other teams, we’re on that precipice of a breakthrough.”
It’s an agonizing place to be, that precipice. The medals are close enough to smell, yet the results aren’t yet there, the podiums remaining elusive. In four tournaments this season, they have made just one main draw, with a high finish of 19th at the Saquarema Challenge in April. But examine the finishes further, match by match, and what you’ll find is a team who can make anyone sweat. They just haven’t put it all together for a full tournament.
Taking scalps is the phrase O’Dea uses when describing big wins. Their first came in Saquarema, sweeping a strong Estonian team whose resume boasts a fifth in World Championships and an Elite16 semifinal. But, as Fuller alluded to, they narrowly missed wins over Brazil’s Pedro and Guto, dropping 18-20 in the third set, and Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk, who edged them 15-12 in the third. A month later, in China, they pushed the Grimalt cousins, Esteban and Marco, to 22-24 in the first set, lost the second, and watched as Chile went on to win the gold medal. A month after that? A 21-23 third-set loss to Austria’s Julian Horl and Alex Horst in the final round of the qualifier. In a month, Horl and Horst will be competing in the Olympic Games.
“I’m getting more comfortable,” Fuller said of those tight matches against high level teams. “Getting the reps of those matches now. I enjoy those matches and I come out of them thinking I’m not deflated, I’m uplifted, next time we’re getting that. Spirits are high.”
There is, in this season, only one more “next time” to flip the narrow losses into wins. That comes this weekend in Ningbo Xiangshan, China, at the Asian Volleyball Federation Continental Cup, where the stakes are a bid to the Olympics. The winning federation goes to Paris. The rest go home. Simple and brutal. O’Dea and Fuller will be joined by Thomas Reid and Jack McManaway, who have made the semifinals in all three Futures they’ve played this season, winning bronze in Coolangatta, Australia, and gold two weeks later in Tahiti.
With those two pairings, New Zealand has as good a shot as any in recent memory to send a team to an Olympic Games for the first time since 1996.
The fact that they have any shot at all is a credit to one man: Jason Lochhead.
The Ginja Ninja, as he has affectionately become known in the United States, Lochhead built the Vanuatu women’s program into a legitimate small power, helped Ben Saxton and Chaim Schalk to the best stretch of their careers through the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and then moved to Tallahassee, Florida, to coach both Florida State and Nick Lucena and Phil Dalhausser heading into the Tokyo Games. After Tokyo, however, Lochhead, one of New Zealand’s most decorated — and certainly most well-known — players, moved home.
High Performance Sport in New Zealand took note.
“Jason deciding to come back to New Zealand was the catalyst for High Performance Sport for New Zealand to say ‘Hey let’s find some money because we’ve got this Olympic coach coming back,’ so he kind of started that program himself basically,” O’Dea said. “It’s night and day from what it was.”
What was it before, exactly?
“Us going down to hit a few balls,” O’Dea said, laughing. “Since Jason’s been back, it’s a proper program and he’s on a mission right now and really wants to push us. It’s a huge job but it’s been great.”
Lochhead’s return provided the impetus for O’Dea to consider rejoining the program on a more regular basis. It drew Reid back from a recent CrossFit kick and lured McManaway, a talented basketball player, off the basketball court and onto the beach. It gave Fuller, who worked full-time for the local city council — and still does — the nudge he needed to spend more time on the sand and treat it less as a hobby and more as a legitimate vocation.
“I’d settled down before and said I’ll give this volleyball thing a crack. That was a big factor for me: we’ve got a coach, got some money, let’s do this full time and see what happens,” he said. “Jason’s been awesome. It’s a big job.”
Indeed it is. On any given day, Lochhead will train the developing pairs, the top women’s duo in Alice Zeimann and Shaunna Polley, occasionally another session after that — and then the men. All at his own house.
He has literally built the New Zealand program in his backyard.
“And he’s coming out with the same energy,” O’Dea said. “It’s impressive.”
Even more impressive would be if Lochhead and New Zealand were able to perform this weekend in China, to take those scalps they’ve been seeking, to alas claim the finish that has been eluding them. Like the men, Zeimann and Polley have been so-close-you-can-taste-it this season. They have a significant win on their resume, a 2022 victory over world No. 2 Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, and significant hard-fought losses, too, namely multiple three-setters against Italians Valentina Gottardi and Marta Menegatti and the former Canadian pairing of Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes.
Like the men, they have as excellent a shot at winning the Continental Cup as any in recent memory. Joined by Olivia MacDonald and Danielle Quigley, they will need to fend off strong pairings from China, Japan, and Thailand.
“Tension is one thing I’ve noticed coming into these tournaments,” said O’Dea, who is now on his third continental cup. “You know it’s a couple of days you have to play well for and it’s always on your mind.”
A couple of days to get what they’ve been seeking all season: The breakthrough win.
The win that would push them off the precipice and directly into the Olympic Games.
