Sanne Keizer

Sanne Keizer (born 6 February 1985) is a Dutch beach volleyball player who plays as a right-side defender with her partner Madelein Meppelink.

Her career highlights include two gold, two silver and four bronze medals on the FIVB World Tour.

Keizer was born on 6 February 1985 in Doetinchem, Netherlands.

As a child, she was a competitive swimmer before switching to water polo because her parents felt that she should play a team sport instead.

She was called to the junior national water polo team, but eventually left the sport because the chlorinated swimming pool water was tinting her blond hair green and she was afraid of going to the hairdressers.

At the age of 11, she took up indoor volleyball as she wanted to continue playing a ball sport.

From 1996 to 2002, Keizer played for her local club, Orion Volleybal Doetinchem, where she rose from the youth ranks to the club's first team that played in the Eerste Divisie, the third division of the Dutch volleyball league system.

Keizer was scouted by the national beach volleyball team when she was 15.

For the next few years, she continued to play club indoor volleyball while spending the summer off-seasons training with the junior national beach volleyball team in Dwingeloo.

She competed in her first international beach volleyball event in 2002 and became the inaugural U18 World Champion the same year.

Keizer debuted on the World Tour the following year.

For the next eight seasons, she had limited international success competing with three different partners.

On the indoor side, she transferred from Orion to Longa '59 for the 2002–03 season, before moving to Amsterdam to spend one season playing for VV Martinus in the Eredivisie, the highest division of the Dutch volleyball league system.

Keizer made her international beach volleyball debut at the 2002 U18 European Championships in August, where she and Arjanne Stevens won the silver medal.

Two weeks later, the pair became the inaugural U18 World Champions with an unbeaten tournament run in Xylokastro, Greece.

Following her success on the junior circuit, Keizer debuted on the FIVB World Tour in 2003, partnering with Merel Mooren at the $150K Hellas Open in June.

The duo did not progress past the qualifying rounds in Hellas or in their next four events.

In their final tournament of the year at the $150K Lianyungang Open in August, Keizer and Mooren beat teams from Spain and Sweden to advance to Keizer's first main draw on the World Tour.

They lost all three of their group stage matches in the main draw and did not progress further.

Keizer concluded her first season on the World Tour ranked No. 70 in the world with Mooren.

Keizer and Mooren continued to struggle to qualify for main draws on the World Tour the following year, making it out of the qualifiers twice in their first eight tournaments.

They also competed in two events on the Challenger and Satellite circuit in August, winning one gold medal.

In 2007, Keizer obtained an HBO diploma in Commercial Economics at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Her breakthrough came at the end of 2008 when she teamed up with van Iersel.

She continued to live in Amsterdam until she moved to The Hague in 2008.

The pair entered the top ten of the world rankings the year after and medalled on the World Tour five times in total, including their first World Tour title in 2011.

She is a two-time European Champion and she represented the Netherlands at the 2012 Summer Olympics, finishing ninth with Marleen van Iersel.

Keizer took up indoor volleyball at the age of 11 and spent several years playing in the Dutch volleyball leagues.

She became a member of the Police Top Sport Selection (Politie Topsport Selectie) in May 2012.

The programme ensures selected athletes receive support, including employment opportunities, from the Dutch police force.

During her temporary retirement from beach volleyball, Keizer earned a master's degree in criminal investigation and worked as a police detective in The Hague.

They continued to play together until Keizer retired from beach volleyball at the end of 2013.

After a four-year hiatus, Keizer returned to full-time competition partnered with Meppelink.

Having been a blocker in the first leg of her career, she came back as a defender instead.

She is married to beach volleyball player-turned-coach Michiel van der Kuip, and the couple have two children, twins born in 2016.

She left the police force upon her return to full-time competition at the end of 2017.

Keizer has two brothers and one sister.

Keizer and Meppelink found success quickly, medalling on the World Tour twice in their first season together and winning the 2018 European Championships.

Towards the end of the season, the pair had accumulated sufficient ranking points to directly enter the World Tour main draws of the $180K Milan and Rio de Janeiro Opens, finishing 25th and 17th respectively.

They ended the year with an improved world ranking of No. 39.