Our story
The idea for Longnet was born when the experienced national team coach Kåre Mol wanted to pass on his knowledge to a small group of young athletes in the little village Strandvik. The ambitious coach wanted to make full use of the space in the village's small gym. Instead of stringing up a normal volleyball net, Kåre Mol pulled a simple rope along the longest side of the gym. In this way, more children had more space to play the ball over the net. To better see whether the ball passed over the net or not, Kåre ripped out newspaper pages, and attached them along the rope. Now, all the children in the village could play with and against each other in various mini-games, and the stage was set for good and efficient training - even in a small gym in Western Norway.
Kåre quickly realized that this was a more effective way of teaching volleyball. In 2008, he founded Longnet, and started looking for a net manufacturer who could create exactly the web he envisioned. The net had to be long, to reach wall-to-wall in larger sport gyms. It had to be lightweight in order to be properly tightened, and it had to be durable, to be used by generations of players.
The next issue was the tensioning system. Throughout his 40-year volleyball career, Kåre has seen most of the net solutions the world had to offer. He set out to perfect his own tensioning system for his own concept. Inspired by pulleys commonly used in sailboats, Kåre Mol found the perfect way to tighten the Longnet. The result was Longnet's patented pulley - which is as easy to use as it is elegant, and can be tightened by both children & adults.
Since its inception in 2008, hundreds of schools and sports clubs across Norway use Longnet for practice and teaching. We want to make it possible for the child to learn by playing, and for the young athlete to maximize the number of ball touches across the net - regardless of whether they are in a small gym in Western Norway or not.
We cannot talk about Longnet without mentioning our elite players in Beachvolley Vikings. In 2015, Kåre Mol, Merita Mol and Jetmund Berntsen founded the Beachvolley Vikings team.
Three years later, Anders Mol and Christian Sørum revolutionized beach volleyball with their dominant defensive game. Nine years later, the duo has topped the world rankings for five years, won Olympic gold, World Championships gold and four European Championships golds.
Anders and all his brothers grew up playing volleyball in the small gym in Western Norway, utilizing the learning principles introduced in Longnet.
Biography
Kåre Mol is one of Norway's most famous and competent coaches, and has worked with hundreds of athletes, from beginners to international top level, throughout his 40 years as a coach. Kåre himself has 95 international matches indoors for Norway, and was one of the pioneers in Norway's first golden age in beach volleyball in the 90s. He has coached Norway's national team both in the sand and indoor, and has been responsible for athletes in
4 different Olympics - boasting a gold medal with Anders Mol and Christian Sørum in Tokyo 2020. In the World Championships, his team won bronze in Hamburg, 2019 and gold in Rome, 2022. His athletes also won four European Championship golds in a row in the period 2018 - 2021.
In 2018, Kåre was voted Coach of the Year by the IBVCA (International Beach Volleyball Coaches Association), and has been named Coach of the Year in Europe three times by CEV. He has also authored three books on coaching volleyball - "Ballsidighet", "The ABC of Volleyball" and "Mini-volleyball". He has been Head of Sports development at the NVBF (Norwegian Volleyball Federation), participated in the founding of the famous volleyball gymnasium "Toppvolley Norway", and has put considerable resources into developing the Longnet concept for the last decade.
Over the past 10 years, Kåre has been a course instructor for trainers and teachers both inside and outside of Norway's borders, and is known as a skilled, charismatic and playful coach. He has developed a playful, conscious and engaging approach to volleyball together with his wife Merita, and their five children.
There has always been a burning commitment to being able to simplify, develop and make the sport of volleyball more accessible to children and young people at all levels. Through the implementation of this philosophy, the idea of Longnet was conceived. The combination of Kåre's passion for the sport of volleyball and ball sports in general led him to search for new ways to teach volleyball. Longnet offers an ingenious solution to space utilization, accessibility and ease of use, and the training concept makes it exciting and engaging for children & young athletes to participate. Longnet's basic philosophy is to increase the number of ball touches and degree of involvement, as this is central to the development of the sport in general, and makes it a more challenging activity to participate in.
Our philosophy
Play to Learn is one of the slogans of the Longnet philosophy. Our pedagogy is based on the idea that children learn best and most where play and competition go hand in hand, where you are constantly involved in the game and develop a great degree of understanding of the game from an early age. The fundamental element of the philosophy is learning to read and move in ball courts - a most necessary skill in all ball sports. We also believe that children learn best when play is involved.
With Longnet, our philosophy gets full expression. More children & young athletes can participate in activities at the same time, in the same gym size. Make your training routine more efficient with Longnet!
