The game monster," says trainer legend Hans Voigt with great respect about the development of Cinja Tillmann, "has become a sovereign strategic player." With the success that the "former gambler" at the beach volleyball world championships in Rome together with Svenja Müller won the bronze medal.

And with the satisfaction of having shown it to all the doubters.

Achim Dreis

sports editor.

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Almost two years ago, Cinja Tillmann was not considered worthy of support within the German Volleyball Association (DVV) in a duet with Kim Behrens, with whom she played until 2020.

At tournaments in the world series, the two were regularly canceled by the long-standing DVV sports director Niclas Hildebrand, which the players complained about, but in the final instance in spring 2022 they were not given a right.

Now Tillman saved the DVV's World Cup balance and is considered the strongest trump card at the World Tour tournament in Hamburg, which begins on Thursday, and at the subsequent European Championships in Munich.

Found a new partner

In a duet with the 21-year-old, 1.92 meter tall block player Müller, the 1.74 meter short Tillmann changed her style of play.

"I'm only in defence," she says: "That's where I belong too." In the Tillmann/Behrens duo, both players were rather small, so they shared the work on the net and on the field.

"Kim and I solved it well," says the 30-year-old in retrospect.

"After all, we were second at the European Championships."

They won the silver medal in 2020 in their last tournament together, when Tillmann/Behrens and the DVV had long been playing against each other in court.

Kim Behrens is now called van de Velde and became a mother in the spring.

Cinja Tillmann found a new partner in Svenja Müller, who was almost ten years her junior.

In order to be able to play in this constellation, she even moved to Hamburg, where she trains at the federal base under the direction of the DVV with national team status.

She has banished the argument from her head so that she can look ahead unencumbered.

"I have nothing against the city," she says with a wink: "I live with my boyfriend." Thomas Kaczmarek is also part of the coaching team.

National coach Kirk Pitman is in charge of the strategy: "He has ideas on how we can develop our game." However, the decisive man in the background remains Hans Voigt, who is responsible for athletic training and is instrumental in the great careers of Julius Brink and Laura Ludwig brought the way.

"It was a basic requirement that I could continue working with Hans," says Cinja Tillmann, "otherwise we would not have come to the Hamburg location."

The former university lecturer Voigt is well over 70 years old and is considered the man who has penetrated the complexity of beach volleyball like no other, while at the same time being able to disassemble the game elements into individual parts and put them back together again.

For him, playing beach volleyball means "developing freedom under time pressure".

Voigt has been working with Cinja at its Witten location for five years.

During this time she has greatly improved her technical and tactical repertoire, as was shown most recently at the World Cup, when she kept throwing in surprising, cheeky moves.

The question of whether the older person is the leader in the team does not arise: "It doesn't matter who is how young.

Everyone bears responsibility,” says Tillmann.

Lecturer Voigt goes one step further and explains: "Beach volleyball is an individual sport that is played in pairs."

The "experts" have a different idea, he says - whereby the term is coined for the German association and has a slightly mocking effect.

These “experts” said for a long time about Tillmann that she was too small and not athletic enough.

"You have to laugh about that," says Voigt, "her athletics are excellent."

At the tournament in Rome, like Svenja Müller, she caught a corona infection.

But now both are ready for the upcoming home games: At the elite tournament in Hamburg it is all about world ranking points, at the European Championships in Munich about medals.

Their objective is philosophically based: "Play every single point as well as possible".

Everything else follows.

Excessive expectations from outside or above will no longer allow her to be pushed in.