Volleyball coach Aleksandersen
Master Trainer battles terminal cancer
03/27/2023, 5:48 p.m
Despite a cancer diagnosis, MTV Stuttgart signed Tore Aleksandersen as a coach at the end of 2020. The 55-year-old is leading the women’s volleyball team to victory in the main round of the Bundesliga this season – but is now missing before the playoffs due to illness. He wants to get fit again for them.
Stuttgart’s volleyball master coach does not give up. Tore Aleksandersen, 55, has terminal prostate cancer. As head coach of MTV Allianz Stuttgart, winner of the main round of the women’s Bundesliga, the family man continues to work – as best he can and for as long as he can. The past few weeks have been difficult, his values have deteriorated. Aleksandersen can’t lead every training session right now, the team has to win games without him.
Values are one thing, one’s own feelings are another. “Right now I’m feeling better every day. I’m doing two different therapies at the moment and I hope they have a great effect,” says the coach. But yes, it’s intense right now, he says that too. “It’s not influenza. The energy level isn’t great.”
Apart from the last “month, month and a half” he has had few complaints. He gained weight and his joints became stiffer. “But it wasn’t a big problem.” Then the pills wouldn’t have worked that well. “I got pneumonia 14 days ago. I need some time to recover.”
Team feels sorry
He also has an appointment for immunotherapy at the University Hospital in Tübingen this Monday, he says. “With cancer, you have no guarantees. It works great for one, not so well for another,” he says. He is open about his illness. Even at this stage, he comes across as calm. Calmness – that’s how people from his sporting environment describe it – distinguishes him even in the most stressful moments of a game.
“He’s a great fighter. You can only take your hat off to how he’s dealing with his situation. But he has to take care of his health now,” said Stuttgart sporting director Kim Oszvald-Renkema. Most recently, Aleksandersen was only briefly in training, he wrote Whatsapp messages and gave emotional speeches on the phone.
With their hands, the team forms a “T” for their coach.
(Photo: IMAGO/Press Photo Baumann)
If you drop by the performance of last season’s double winner in the Stuttgart Arena, you will see Faruk Feray pacing back and forth on the sidelines as a substitute. And sees how the women from Stuttgart convincingly secure the first place in the main round and thus the best starting position for the playoffs. “At the moment I’m most tired in the evening,” says Aleksandersen, “and there’s no great need for me to be there right now.” He wants to do without the hour-long bus tour to the away game in Dresden on Saturday and be back for the start of the playoff on April 8th.
“Now it’s low. For the first time we will see how we deal with it,” says Barbara Roxana Wezorke. The middle blocker says: “He was fine all season. He was able to do almost everything. But there are always phases when he takes a step back. Then we feel sorry when we see that he is suffering and is struggling in training. “
“We can’t plan at the moment”
Aleksandersen had already received the diagnosis before he came to Stuttgart, he was currently a coach in Turkey. At the end of 2020, MTV Stuttgart still relied on him. “Because he was the right man for the job,” says Renkema. “We wanted to win titles, we succeeded with him.” In 2022, Aleksandersen celebrated the championship and the cup with his players and was in the final of the European CEV Cup. This season, the team reached the quarter-finals in the Champions League, but ended up being eliminated without a coach.
Aleksandersen’s prostate cancer has spread. Initially, only the spine was affected, but now a lot more, he says. “I actually find it very impressive that he still has such ambition and still pays attention to all the details that we’re doing wrong and he still demands everything from us,” says Wezorke. Team colleague Marie Schölzel says: “To continue in his situation is not a matter of course and shows what kind of person he is.”
Volleyball makes Aleksandersen happy. Of course he could fly home to Norway, sit in the living room, watch TV or go for a walk. “But I don’t want that. I want to live a normal life for as long as possible,” he says. And sport also gives him strength.
How things will continue is difficult to say. For the coming season, the club has signed Konstantin Bitter from Schwarz-Weiß Erfurt. The 33-year-old should work as a head or assistant coach – depending on how Aleksandersen is doing. “I think you have to be so honest that we can’t plan at the moment,” says Renkema: “His future is very uncertain. We hope with him that the therapy will work and that he can be with us again soon.”