25/06/2013 14:00
Getting to know: Alexei Prawdzic and Mirco Gerson
2013 CEV Beach Volleyball Satellite - Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland, June 25, 2013. Next to Sébastien Chevallier and Mats Kovatsch, Mirco Gerson and Alexei Prawdzic will be carrying the Swiss hopes of home glory at the CEV Satellite tournament that is set to start on Thursday in Lausanne. In this short interview we’ll get to know Mirco and Alexei a little closer before moving on to their expectations for this much anticipated home campaign.
“Only last year I decided to devote myself exclusively to Beach Volleyball and to embark on a professional career” says Prawdzic. “So I started looking around to find a defensive player I would be a good match with. There were a few available but I opted for Mirco. He’s young, had a very good season last year and he also wanted to play professionally. After Swiss Volley announced the partnership of Chevallier with Kovatsch and Gabathuler teamed up with Jonas Weingart, I decided to give it a go with Mirco”. “Since there were other players available, I had to wait for some weeks for Alexei to make up his mind” Gerson – who is only 21 – reveals. “I finally got a positive answer mainly because Alexei realized that we share the same goals for the future”.
Questioned about their respective strengths, Gerson says: “We are different players and have got very different personalities. That said we complement each other very well and we share the same ambitions and goals”. “Technically speaking our block-defence system is certainly one of our strengths. I’ve got a very high block and Mirco is extremely good in defence. On top of this, we’re both fresh: though Mirco is younger than me (Prawdzic is 25), this is our first year together and as professional athletes. This provides us with a good basis to work on in terms of goals, motivation and experience”.
Prawdzic has set very clear goals for his first season with Gerson: “We want to develop as individual players and as a team as well. We want to show consistency in our play and show our skills on the international stage as well as on the national tour. We want to win some of the tournaments taking place here in Switzerland beating the A-Teams. We already did so in the opening leg of the Coop Beachtour in Zurich. We also want to make it regularly through the qualification phase of FIVB tournaments and play well also in CEV competitions so as to advance to the late stages of the events we enter”.
Gerson’s dream is to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro while Prawdzic adds: “My goal is to become a well-respected player and be ranked among the top ten in the world. I want to become Switzerland’s nr. 1 block player and make it to the 2016 Olympics in Rio. I would like to reach these goals playing together with Mirco but our focus remains for the time being on this season and on next year as well. We want to lay good foundations first and so continue our development as professional athletes”.
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