Vernon-Evans excited to go after his beach dreams

A Tokyo 2020 volleyball Olympian with Canada, Sharone Vernon-Evans is excited to continue to represent his country internationally around the world, but since the start of the month, the 24-year-old player has been doing it on a different surface.

A 2017 FIVB World League bronze medallist, the opposite has recently made a switch to the sand and is currently in the early stages of the process to achieve his goal of getting to compete on a very high level on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour.

Vernon-Evans and partner Steven Marshall, a Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 volleyball Olympian, started practicing on the sand at the beginning of June, finally putting in motion a plan they had talked about for years.

After concluding their trajectories with the Canadian national team at the Tokyo Games, in 2021, they took the 2022 international season off to rest and reset and are now ready to embrace their new challenge.

“I always wanted to play beach volleyball after the Tokyo Olympics and am very happy about my decision,” Vernon-Evans told Volleyball World. “Steve and I talked about it frequently while we were on the national team and we knew we would be playing together when that happened. I love having him as my partner, it’s been amazing that we’re getting to do it now.”

This, however, won’t be the first experience on the sand for either Vernon-Evans or the 33-year-old Marshall. While the opposite represented Canada at the 2014 FIVB U17 Beach Volleyball World Championship and the 2016 FIVB U19 Beach Volleyball World Championship, Marshall has appeared in Age-Group World Championships in 2007 and 2009 and also competed in FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour events in 2010 and 2011, having Olympians Ben Saxton, Sam Schachter and Chaim Schalk as partners.

The move is not full-time – at least not yet. Both Vernon-Evans and Marshall will continue their volleyball club careers, with the opposite set to play for the third-straight season for the Sakai Blazers in the Japanese V-League.

Juggling the demands of volleyball and beach volleyball simultaneously is a massive challenge and not many players have had success in it. Vernon-Evans, however, has a close positive example in fellow Canadian Sarah Pavan, who conciliated careers in both sports between 2013 and 2018, winning 11 international medals in the period and qualifying for the Rio 2016 Olympics.

“Sarah laid out a blueprint that has proven to be very successful, so I would love to follow it and hope to one day have the same success she’s had,” Vernon-Evans added. “My goal is similar to everything I do, which is to be the best version of myself I can possibly be. I will work as hard as I possibly can to put myself in the best position to constantly improve and learn.”

Vernon-Evans and Marshall officially started their ‘beach careers’ last week, just a few days after they began training, at the Beach Pro Tour Futures event held in Lille, France. A two-set defeat in the first round of the qualifier may have not brought the result the Canadians expected, but it certainly broke the ice and gave them some food for thought going forward.

“It was nice to finally play a match and see where we are at and where we need to improve,” the Canadian reflected. “I think we need to continue to work on our cardio and get our beach legs to where they need to be to sustain our level throughout a tournament. I feel like I have many things to improve on, I’m not quite where I would like to be yet performance-wise.”

The first step of the Canadians’ beach project will go on until mid-August, when they will return to their volleyball clubs to prepare for the upcoming 2023-2024 season.

Until then, Vernon-Evans and Marshall will play in some national events in Canada and are also entered at both the Beach Pro Tour Edmonton Challenge and Montréal Elite16, which will take place in their country in the second half of July.

Because of their limited entry points, the two have to wait until the entry lists are finalized to find out if they will be able to play in those events, but the possibility of facing some of the best teams in the world in their home sand so early in their journeys already excites them.

“We’ll for sure play in some events in Canada to help improve our conditioning, overall skills and connection with each other,” Vernon-Evans explained. “If we get into these Beach Pro Tour tournaments, we want to compete as hard as we can and see where we match up to the best there is. We will use these events to learn and understand what we need to do to improve to get to that level of the world’s best.”