With a unique offensive style, Kantor and Losiak are the team no one wants to play against

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Losiak is one of the most talented setters competing in the Beach Major Series

Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak aren’t the tallest team competing in the Beach Volleyball Major Series. They aren’t the most experienced duo or the tandem with more medals either, but if you ask around, the Polish will probably be at the top of the list of the most undesirable opponents in the sands of the world.

That’s because of the unique playing style they developed over the 10 seasons they’ve been together. With an offense built upon a series of quick moves and a wide variation of plays, they are a true nightmare for blockers trying to stop them at the net.

“It feels good to see that we created a style that other teams are trying to adopt,” Losiak told beachmajorseries.com. “We know our system is very hard for blockers as they have to move all the time and they never know what we’re going to do. Sometimes players come to us and joke that we should stop playing like this, that it’s not fair.”

Their inspiration came from indoor volleyball, a sport both of them played before they moved to the beach, where they quickly adapted by winning Under-19, Under-21 and Under-23 World Championships titles together.

Currently sitting at the third place in the world rankings, the duo now reaps the benefits of bringing a different approach to the game of beach volleyball, one that proved very successful in their 10-year partnership.

“It was our idea to play like this,” Losiak added. “We wanted to create a new style and we were confident that it could take us where we are now. It feels good to have brought something new to beach volleyball. The indoor game is really fast and I think it’s great that we can do it in the beach too. And we see a lot of teams trying to play the same way, so it’s nice.”

Their entire system revolves around quick and accurate sets. Besides of playing with unparalleled speed, Kantor and Losiak also try to use the entire extension of the net to elude their opponents and this combination has proved to be lethal in recent years.

“The most important thing is setting,” Losiak remarked. “We want to handset all the time because that’s how we can control the situation. If you have good hands, you can do anything with the ball, but if you bump set, you can’t have the same control.”

“Of course that playing with all this speed can lead us to make more mistakes because it’s more difficult to backset and to play with the ball closer to the antenna all the time, but we’re willing to take the risk.”

CEV Beach Volleyball on Twitter

Piotr Kantor 🇵🇱 knows how to set the ball away from the block! Watch this masterpiece from the first men's semifinal at the CEV #BeachVolleyball #EuroBeachVolley Masters in Pelhrimov @KantorLosiak @PolskaSiatkowka https://t.co/gu9h4P98eC

At 26, the Polish stars probably have their best years still ahead of them, but the 13 medals – two golds, six silvers and five bronzes – they’ve won in the World Tour already leave little doubts about their talents.

But there’s still something they miss right now.

“We are still young and I think we can play better and with more stability, which is important for us,” Losiak said. “We want to keep the same level over all tournaments and I feel that each season, as we get more and more experience, we play better than the previous one. We’ve been having some good finishes, but we think we still need an important result in a big tournament, such as the Olympic Games or the World Championships.”

Well, the Beach Volleyball FIVB World Tour Finals Hamburg 2018 presented by Vodafone are right around the corner, guys...