Steven 'Steve' Grotowski (born 30 May 1982 in London)[1] is a British beach volleyball player.
, Grotowski is tall and weighs .[1] He is coached by Morph Bowes.[1] He lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, United States and has dual British and US citizenship.[1] [2] He attended the University of New Haven where he began playing indoor volleyball before switching his focus to beach volleyball.[3]
Grotowski won the Volleyball England Beach Championship at Brighton in 2007 partnered by Jody Gooding.[4]
From 2007 to 2011 Grotowski was partnered by Gregg Weaver.[5] The pair achieved a best finish of ninth position in a 2009 Challenger event in Cyprus and also had five top-twenty finishes in Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) Open events.[5] In 2011 he teamed up with fellow British player John Garcia Thompson; the pair achieved a best finish of seventeenth at the 2011 FIVB Open in Shanghai, China.[5] At the 2011 Swatch World Tour Prague Open the pair defeated the top seeded American pairing of Casey Jennings and Kevin Wong 25 - 23, 24 - 22 in the first round of competition but were then beaten 19 - 21, 16 - 21 by Josh Binstock and Richard Van Huizen of Canada in the second round.[6]
Competing with Adrian Carambula, Grotowski finished runner-up at the 2012 Belmar open; the number three seeds were beaten 14 - 21, 21 - 23 by Ryan Doherty and Casey Patterson in the final.[7]
Grotowski and John Garcia Thompson were selected to compete for Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Olympics after being chosen ahead of Gregg Weaver and Jody Gooding.[8] Both pairs competed in the minimum twelve FIVB events require for qualification with Grotowski and Garcia Thompson earning 522 rankings points compared to Weaver and Gooding's 354 points.[8] Grotowski and Garcia Thompson became the first ever British men to compete in beach volleyball at the Olympics.[8]