Roundnet-Duo: "The rule changes had nothing to do with our retirement"
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A common picture: Cisek and Showalter celebrating a win.
(Photo: Jack Mathews)
The world’s best roundnet team Cisek/Showalter recently announced their retirement from the sport. Despite barely being able to practice with each other, they dominated at nearly every tournament over the last three years, winning three straight U.S. Championships. Even without a world championship, Cisek/Showalter have rightfully earned the designation of "best team in the world," as there is no getting past the North American teams right now.
In our interview, PJ Showalter looks back on his time with partner Tyler Cisek. He gives his take on who can take their place and tells us what unpopular sport they plan to try next. He also reveals under which circumstances they might come back from retirement.
Your retirement came shortly after the rule changes. Are you afraid of the new rules?
The rule changes had nothing to do with our decision. We had actually made the decision several months before any rule change happened, but we decided not to announce it because there wasn’t much happening in the Spikeball world anyway. The extra time made it possible to make sure we had thought through the decision adequately. We both like the new rules for the most part! I’m a big fan of the new rules, Tyler likes them but isn’t quite as pumped about them as I am.
How much impact does Corona have on your decision to retire from Roundnet?
We were planning for last year (2020) to be our last year most likely. We especially wanted to play the first World Championships in Belgium. When the whole season got canceled, including Worlds, we had to rethink our plans. So yes, COVID definitely affected our plans. It was tough to not play a season last year, but it gave us a lot of free time to spend doing other things, so we are grateful for that! It has been an awesome stage of life spending most of our time playing spikeball, but we have other things we want to spend more time investing in now!
Wouldn‘t that be a motivation to keep playing? Winning a world championship?
The world championship is definitely motivation to keep playing. When it got canceled for the second straight year we started to think about the likelihood that it gets canceled for third year as well and how that affects our priorities and desire to play. We have been on top of the sport for three straight years. The world championship was the only thing that got us really excited because it was one of the only challenges we hadn’t had the opportunity to take on yet. We may still play in the world championship whenever it does happen, but we decided we wanted to spend our time doing other things that are important to us in the meantime. At the very least we would probably go to the world championship to support our friends from Cologne, Paris, Denmark and Belgium.
Who do you think will have the best chances to claim your Number-1-spot? Will Preston Bies finally win another national championship now?
From what I’ve heard, Preston won’t be playing much this year either. It will be interesting to see how many tournaments he plays. If he plays a lot with Caleb, his teammate, I think they will be one of the best teams again. I don’t know if there is an obvious choice to win the national championship in my mind. There are a couple new teams that are pretty impressive, and there are two or three teams like Trippy Lizard, Boysterous (Preston’s team), and Schweppes that I like to make a run at being champions.
Looking at footage from your games, you both seem so relaxed and your playing effortless. Still you get lots of defensive touches and your hits are on point. How much time did you spend on training in the last years?
Cisek und Showalter after winning the US Championships 2019
(Photo: Jack Matthews)
We have spent many many hours practicing and training over the past few years. We purposefully play with a relaxed style so that we maintain consistency throughout an entire tournament. If we can keep that relaxed style of play it helps us perform under pressure when it comes to the championship games at the end of tournaments. We live about 10 hours away from each other (Ty in New York, PJ in Ohio). The distance between our houses means that we never really practiced with each other very much. We would usually just meet at tournaments and play the tournaments together. We did spend a lot of time practicing with other players in our hometowns though.
Would you consider yourself perfect Roundnet-players? If not, in which aspects of the game do you struggle the most?
We are definitely not perfect players. I don’t think there’s one category of weakness that I could easily point to. There is usually a different reason each time we play poorly in a game. It might be that we were having trouble focusing and playing hard, maybe the other team served really well and we struggled with serve-receive, maybe we were being lazy and not getting points on some of our hits. The key to success in our opinion is consistency and if we are inconsistent in any area of the game it creates enough room for the other talented teams in the sport to take advantage.
You’ve known each other for the past six years, now. Do you still remember the moment you met?
We met at the tour stop in Lancaster, PA the summer of 2015. I was playing on a team with my brother, Seth, and Tyler was playing with his friend, Fitzy. Seth and Fitzy met each other and were talking a little bit between games. As they were talking they realized that neither of them were going to be able to play in the next big tournament (they were both attending weddings that weeked). This tournament was called SummerSpike and it was always one of the biggest tournaments of each year. When they realized neither of them were playing they called Ty and I over and introduced us and said that we should play together for SummerSpike. We talked for about 30 seconds, agreed to play together at SummerSpike, and then went back to playing. That was how we met. Two weeks later, we arrived in Coney Island, NY for the SummerSpike tournament and actually got a chance to hang out together for the first time. We immediately clicked as friends and ended up winning the tournament and beating the #1 team in the country who hadn’t lost in 3 years. Through that tournament we realized that we made a pretty good team and more importantly that we loved being around each other. Our friendship began there and we’ve been traveling the country and world together ever since.
Are there any particular moments in your Roundnet career that you like to remember the most?
Some of our best memories come from a 2 week trip to Europe that took us to Denmark, France, Germany, and Belgium. We loved playing the skilled European players, teaching newer players some of our strategies, and just getting to spend time with the different communities that we encountered. We have many special memories from that trip because of the wonderful people we met.
In what way has Roundnet affected your life?
A team, even off pitch.
(Photo: Private)
Playing this sport has taken us on a wild journey. 2 years ago Ty was a groomsman in my wedding. God has blessed us with so many relationships and memories through this sport that have changed us and helped us to grow. We owe a lot to the experiences we’ve had playing pro level spikeball for the past years.
How are you going to fill the void quitting Roundnet leaves in your life? Are you going to try out a different unpopular sport?
We have started playing disc golf together sometimes and also have talked about taking a shot at the pickleball scene. Both Ty and I have started separate woodworking companies. Ty makes custom live-edge wooden tables and also sells live-edge wood slabs. I (PJ) carve custom wooden bowls from a variety of different wood types that I sell. We also love getting to spend more time with our families and friends. Spikeball will probably never be completely out of our lives, but we are enjoying having the time to invest in other things as well these days!
The interview was conducted by Max Martens.