It’s a story involving summer, sand, sports and love. About the only thing missing is a Beach Boys tune.
Not only did two of the best beach volleyball players from the Island — Maverick Hatch and Olympian Jamie Broder — win the respective Canadian men’s and women’s championships Sunday in North Bay, Ont., but they will be married Sept. 30 in Cordova Bay.
“It was really exciting to become national champions on the same day,” said Broder, who reached the Sweet Sixteen last year in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Victoria’s Broder and partner Sophie Bukovec from Toronto won the women’s Canadian title. The Comox Valley’s Hatch paired with Garrett May of Scarborough, Ont., to win the men’s national championship.
Claremont Secondary-grad Broder and Courtenay G.P. Vanier-grad Hatch met when they played at Malaspina College in Nanaimo (now Vancouver Island University) for the Mariners. They hit it off as friends, before dating, when they relocated to the national-team training centre for beach volleyball in Toronto.
“It’s a small world sometimes,” mused Hatch, 30.
Being part of the same small world helped this love match.
“We both understand the lifestyle [of world-class beach volleyball],” said Broder, 32.
This is the second time they have ended up on the same podium at the Canadian championships. Hatch won the 2012 men’s national title with Sam Schachter at Spanish Banks in Vancouver, while Broder and former partner Kristina Valjas of Toronto took the women’s bronze medal that year.
Broder is navigating a post-Olympics year late in her career. The Islander and Valjas became the first Canadians to win an FIVB World Tour medal, taking gold at the China Open in 2015, before placing in the top-10 at the Rio Olympics.
The six-foot-seven Hatch, a converted baseball player and former Malaspina athlete of the year, continues to rally from hip surgery two years ago during the qualifying period that ended his dreams of the Rio Games.
Both Islanders are now mentoring younger playing partners. Hatch is with May, 25, a former Ontario university player of the year and three-time all-Canadian with the Western Ontario Mustangs.
Bukovec is 22 and the 2014 women’s world U-21 champion with Tia Miric, 2016 NCAA champion with the USC Trojans and 2013 Canada Summer Games gold medallist.
“I am 10 years older [than Bukovec], so it’s a different challenge … more of a mentorship role for me,” said Broder.
“But it’s a mutually respectful relationship.”
Broder and Hatch are planning on basing their careers back in B.C. after marriage.
