Partnership with veteran Heather Bansley pays off for Sophie Bukovec

HERMOSA BEACH, California — Sophie Bukovec has not been partnered with Heather Bansley long. A mere seven tournaments over the course of eight months. Like any good teacher — and Bansley, a two-time Olympian and three-time Best Defensive Player, is, make no mistake, a fine teacher — Bansley has taught Bukovec much in the words she has said to her new partner.

And, like any good teacher, she has taught her just as much by what she hasn’t.

The last three years have been, as Bukovec said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “not exactly seamless.” First, there was the partnership with Brandie Wilkerson, a pairing that resembled a shooting star: burning bright and brief as a candle. A silver medal at the World Championships proved to Bukovec, and to the rest of the world, that she did have an impressive ceiling as a defender, a position she had never before played professionally. When Wilkerson turned to Melissa Humana-Paredes for the Paris Olympic cycle, Bukovec teamed with Sarah Pavan, the woman with whom Humana-Paredes virtually wrote the Canadian beach volleyball record books.

They were good, too, Bukovec and Pavan. Good enough for three ninths in as many tournaments and a win over Germans Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller, the eventual Beach Pro Tour Finals silver medalists. But, as Bukovec admitted, “Sarah and I are hard personalities. Everybody in Volleyball Canada was like ‘This is either going to be incredible or it’s going to hit the fan in a couple of months.’ We’re both exceptionally aggressive people and it was either going to thrive or it wasn’t so we gave it a go and it didn’t go how either of us intended.”

They split after just three tournaments. Pavan eventually found Molly McBain, a young defender out of Florida State, and together they have found success, winning a bronze medal at the Chiang Mai Challenge last fall, Pavan’s first podium since the summer of 2022. For Bukovec, if she wanted to make a legitimate run at the Paris Games, the options were slim, perhaps narrowed down to a single individual.

Heather Bansley.

She’d retired after taking fifth at the Tokyo Olympics, accepting a role as a coach with the Canadian National Team. But maybe, just maybe, there was some competitor left in her. In any event, there was little sense in Bukovec not sending a text. If worst came to worst, Bansley would say no, Bukovec would find a younger partner to develop, maybe reset her sights on Los Angeles in 2028.

“There was also a moment where I was like ‘Do I hit up Heather?’ I didn’t know if she wanted to play, I didn’t really know her at this time,” Bukovec said. “We had a handful of conversations at this point. When me and Sarah broke up, I asked if she’d be willing to come out of retirement and play with me, and she really missed competing, and I think now she has a different outlook on competition because she’s been coaching. She doesn’t make decisions lightly. I wanted to give her enough time to gather all the information she needed to make the decision. When she made the decision I was like ‘Oh my gosh! I have a partner! This is amazing!’ ”

She had more than that. Far more.

She had one of the sport’s finest ambassadors.

Bansley is a vault of information on the court, yes. She knows the strategy. The technical elements of defense and blocking. She understands the chess match on a four-dimensional level. But when Bukovec and Bansley began competing together, it was the response from her competitors that left a deeper, more lasting impression on Bukovec. Athletes and individuals from every country and federation went out of their way to welcome Bansley back on Tour.

“It could be coaches, it could be players, it could be technical staff, and now to see her in that role, it would be really nice to leave the sport whenever I do and have relationships with the most random people on Tour,” Bukovec said. “All of the shakeups have made me reflect on the player I want to be.”

She doesn’t have to look far to find the archetype of that player. All she needs to do is look at the defender behind her.

“The way that I describe Heather is that she is probably one of the most reliable people, and I think that’s an important quality to have in a partner just because I know she’s going to do what she said she’s going to do,” Bukovec said.

She’ll go beyond what she’s simply supposed to do, asked to do, as well. When Bukovec and Bansley appeared together on a local Canadian radio show, and Bansley was asked a question about the team, she responded in a manner Bukovec had never before heard.

“She’s the first partner that I’ve had that referred to our team as a partnership. A lot of people will say this is my partner or teammate, but teammates and partnership are very different,” Bukovec recalled. “She said ‘Sophie knows just as much as I do, she’s also an experienced volleyball player. This is a partnership.’ ”

The third in as many years for the 28-year-old Bukovec, who has a good laugh when thinking about the many lives she has lived in such a short amount of time.

“My mom will say ‘You’ve done so much in your little life!’ And I’m like ‘Have I? Is this not what people do? Is this not a normal career pathway for people?’ It just feels like it’s what everybody does and goes through,” Bukovec said, laughing. “But I have taken some more time to reflect over the last year and a half about my career and I’m like ‘Oh my gosh I did do all that stuff, that’s pretty crazy.’ You just learn so much about yourself. It’s a catalyst for your personal development.”

She has a fine story to tell, and as she has done her reflecting, she knows it’s one worth telling. Is it likely that her and Bansley will qualify for the Olympics? No, not via the top-17 in the points, anyway. Bukovec is fine with that.

Not everyone can be a winner.

Sometimes it’s better that way.

Not that she’s given up on the dream. Far from it. She’s traveling to Doha and Brazil and Mexico and anywhere else her and Bansley can get into tournaments for a reason, because she believes her and Bansley still can do it, but also because she believes it’s admirable enough to seek greatness in spite of the odds.

“There was a moment after Sarah and I broke up our team that I thought, you know what, the stories where you don’t catch the end zone pass, or don’t hit the buzzer beater, those stories are still important to be told,” Bukovec said. “The impactful ones are the ones where maybe they lose in the semifinal. Now that I’m with Heather, I’ve definitely shifted back to ‘I could be that Cinderella story.’ Especially as a perfectionist athlete, I’m very OCD in the way that I train, I started to allow myself daily fails, and I think career fails are very important to allow yourself to have because you’re also human. You need to give yourself a little bit of grace, especially in tough moments. Sometimes you just have to do everything you can and leave it at that.”

And of all of the many lessons and golden nuggets of wisdom Bansley has already bestowed upon Bukovec, that is the one Bukovec most cherishes, the knowing of what she wants, what Bansley already has: “I just want to leave the sport with the recognition of she did everything she could.”