Technically speaking, the Tokyo Olympics is the first Olympic Games in which Brandie Wilkerson is a competitor. But it is not the first Olympics in which Wilkerson has played a fairly significant role.
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Beach Volleyball
Brandie Wilkerson's Olympic journey just got real
After serving as an alternate in 2016, Wilkerson is enjoying success in Tokyo
Published 01:30, 28 Jul 2021
She was there, in Brazil in 2016 – a place that, ironically, would become her home throughout this strange 2021 season – able to view the staggering load that an Olympic Games entails. She saw the media buzz, the preparation, the extraordinary attention to detail. She was in the meetings with Sarah Pavan and Heather Bansley, going over film, talking strategy. She was on the sand, practising, practising, practising, “like four times a day, running around,” Wilkerson said in April of 2019. “It was so cool to have that behind the scenes. We were like ‘We’re ready! We’ve been doing video!’”
Rio was an invaluable experience for Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes, who were Olympic alternates to Pavan and Bansley in 2016, there to help prepare their Canadian countrywomen any way they could. It showed them what Olympic preparation looked like. What teams at the highest levels of the sport do, on a daily, hourly basis, to win medals on the biggest stage.
It showed Wilkerson exactly where she wanted to be four – now five – years from then.
“We stayed across the street, but a part of me didn’t want to stay in the village, because I wanted to earn it,” Wilkerson said. “So I was like ‘I’m going to get there myself one day.’”
It is more than two years from the time she said those words. And here she is, in Tokyo, staying in the Olympic Village, a place she rightfully earned. Here she is, seeded tenth in these Olympic Games with Bansley, the very defender for whom she was an alternate in Rio de Janeiro.
“It’s been emotional. It’s been exciting. It’s been something I’ve never done before and it’s challenging but that comes with rewards,” Wilkerson said. “This is something I’ll never forget.”
In two matches thus far, Wilkerson and Bansley are 1-1, with a narrow three set loss to China and a convincing sweep over Argentina. Yet they are far more than a team with a .500 record. Wilkerson’s role in this sport is much bigger than just another talented blocker with a stunning vertical leap, a left-hander with arguably the most dangerous option attack in the world.
Every four years, the Olympic Games will leave viewers around the world with new role models. Wilkerson is as good an example as any, a joyful beacon for what can be accomplished with a little grit, humility, inspiration, and to do it all with a graciousness that defies what’s expected of world-class athletes.
Her star, like Bansley's, shines bigger than the confines of sport.
Heather Bansley keeps the ball in play
“I just kept raising the bar and I looked up and ‘Oh, I’m doing this full-time right now,’” Wilkerson said in 2019. “I was pretty surprised by last year, two years ago, when I was stable, I never thought I would be here, and that’s kind of my whole theme with beach volleyball is that I never pictured myself here. I just knew I wanted to challenge myself and accomplish a goal and it was little goal, little goal, little goal, and the next thing you know, your goal is the Olympics, and it’s like ‘When did we get here?’”
It's endearing, that humility, and one of the many reasons why Wilkerson is so fit for this Olympic stage. It is a rare thing, an athlete so devoid of ego yet so replete with success. In 2018, she was voted by her peers as the world’s best blocker, yet she might be the least likely source for you to discover that information. Hers is an aura of gratitude and family, good vibes only. She’s the rare type of athlete who epitomizes exactly what she puts on social media: a blend of boundless joy and determination, supreme accomplishment mixed with a genuine modesty that doesn’t require self-deprecation, because it’s just so real.
Maybe that’s the word, then, to describe Wilkerson: Real. Just real.
As real as the fact that here she is, in Tokyo, staying in the Olympic Village, winning Olympic beach volleyball matches.
Exactly where she knew she’d be all along.
“It feels more real now that we have our first win together,” Wilkerson said. “Heather’s someone I’ve been looking up to for a long, long time so to have this moment with her and share it and have family back home watching is extremely gratifying.”
