Leeds-born volleyball player Jess Grimson on Commonwealth Games mission

Rugby players, footballers and cricketers yes, even triathletes over the last two or so decades, but beach volleyballers? There’s no sand for a start.

And yet one of the two women who will represent Team England at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham later this month was born in Leeds, took her first steps in this city, has family that still lives in Otley and that makes the pilgrimage to Elland Road to watch their beloved United every Saturday.

Step forward Jess Grimson, a 31-year-old sports therapist by day, beach volleyball international for pretty much every other waking minute.

Granted, she lives in Bournemouth now because it’s next to a beach, but you wouldn’t expect a fisherman to live in Wakefield.

Grimson has been playing beach volleyball since high school, it has been her calling since she graduated Bath University at 21, and her second appearance at a Commonwealth Games on home sand later this month is the culmination of a lot of hard work and plenty of sacrifice.

That dedication began at school. “I played a lot of football when I was younger, from five, six right the way through to 16,” says Grimson, whose family moved to Lancashire when she was five, and then to the south coast.

“I had a teacher who recognised I was good at most sports and asked me to go along to try volleyball.

“It was a difficult transition going from a sport where you use your feet to one where you use your hands. But it got to the point where I was getting recognised by England and, by age 15, the camps were starting to clash with football so it was time to pick. Obviously, when you’re 15 and you hear England – it was a no brainer.”

With only the slightest hint of ruefulness, Grimson looks enviously at the acclaim of the Lionesses currently playing in football’s Women’s European Championships and wonders what might have been.

“In hindsight, I was probably playing a much higher level of football than volleyball,” she says. “If I was playing the level I was playing back then, now, I’d probably be at quite a high level. But there was no opportunity 15, 16 years ago.

“Even the people I trained with – Rachel Yankey, Ellen White – they all worked full-time. I couldn’t get my head around ‘how could you be the best in the country and still have to work’.”

Ironically, Grimson has had to work all her life, but beach volleyball was the path she chose and she has not regretted it a single day.

She went to university in Bath because it was close to the national training base and then moved to Bournemouth upon graduation to try to forge a career in the sport.

To do that she had to work, she and her long-time playing partner Victoria Palmer working full-time jobs to fund their beach volleyball training camps and tournaments.

“Up at 5am to train, then work, then back to the beach until it got dark. It’s not a ‘poor us’ scenario; we wanted to do it, we chose to do that, but it was really hard.”

Four years ago, upon qualifying for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Grimson quit her job as a sports therapist to focus fully on her sport. After the 2018 Games she returned to working in a part-time capacity.

“I work about 25 hours a week now,” continues Grimson, who has taken two-and-a-half months of unpaid leave to focus on Birmingham. “It’s enough that I can live and still get some good-quality training in. Any more than that and I think I’d struggle.”

Three years ago her career was nearly over. “I was at a point where I wasn’t enjoying playing any more so it was either quit or change partners,” she tells the YEP. “I took some time off, I thought maybe I was done, and realised I wasn’t, so I decided to mix it up.”

She contacted Daisy Mumby, only a year younger but traditionally an indoor volleyballer.

“I asked Daisy at the end of 2019 if she wanted to work together,” she says.

“We went out to Brazil for a bit of a training camp at the start of January to meet each other properly, see if we got on, see if we trained well together, see if I saw potential in her.

“It was a bit of a gamble from my point of view, leaving a well-established player to join her.

“But she’s 6ft 2in, very physical, and puts in a lot of work. It has been difficult during Covid, we had to work pretty hard; she lives in London and I’m in Bournemouth.

“Fortunately I had the beach but she didn’t see any sand for five months. I didn’t see her for four or five months.”

The dynamic is working though. They have played only a quarter of the tournaments they should have played owing to the pandemic but they have won a number of big ones; a first international event in Norway earlier this summer, a tournament to unlock funding for the Commonwealth Games cycle last summer, and the coveted qualifier to represent Team England at the Games earlier this year.

“I’ve played internationally for eight, nine years and, in the past 12 months, this is the most funding I’ve ever had access to, which is great,” says Grimson.

“You get used to it, it’s never a ‘poor us’ type thing. We’d never had money so it was no difference to us.

“I’m very happy to be at the Commonwealth Games. I didn’t think it was an option. When I rang Daisy to see if she wanted to team up the main incentive was ‘do you want to go to the Commonwealth Games?’.

“I told her all the work involved and, with Covid, it felt like it was getting harder, we were up against teams from our own country playing full-time in the States, so I didn’t think it would be possible.”

How far can they get on home sand, and is that the only incentive?

“This is a good chance to showcase beach volleyball,” adds Grimson, who has plenty of family travelling to the West Midlands from West Yorkshire to support her.

“Our goal is to podium – Australia and Canada are two of the three best teams in the world – but we just want to play some good volleyball, we want to showcase that England does play beach volleyball and we’re pretty good at it.

“We’ve given up a lot the last few years; for me that’s houses, friendships, relationships, my nephew was born this week and I was playing in Italy.

“It’s all my choice, but it would solidify the commitment and time we have put into it.”