Alexandre Durand

* Pre-timeskip
* Post-timeskip

## Image gallery

**Alexandre Durand** (デュランド・アレクサンダー, *De~Yurando Arekusandā*) is a first-year student from Kumazawa Academy. He plays as a wing spiker and ace for the boys' volleyball team. He is regarded as the number one ace in the Hokkaido Prefecture and ranked among the country's top five aces.

## Appearance

Durand is a tall, tough-bodied, and attractive young man with sharp green eyes, broad shoulders and a large wing span. He has fair skin and short messy blond hair. He has a notably sturdy and muscular frame as well as incredibly well-developed arms and legs, cultivated from years of training, which tends to make him quite popular with girls. Durand also has a noticeable scar on his right upper tricep.

Durand is usually seen wearing the traditional Kumazawa Academy uniform, which consists of a white button-up shirt, steel blue tie, navy blue blazer, white cream-coloured pants and black leather shoes. Furthermore, his blazer has a gold academic excellence badge attached to it. During practices or PE, he wears a white gym shirt and navy shorts, and sometimes a blue sports bib when needed. In official matches, he wears the standard navy boys' volleyball club first team uniform emblazoned with the number ten.

## Personality

Durand is a sarcastic, confident and straight-forward young man who strives to protect his loved ones at all costs, though he enjoys provoking people and teasing others. He can be quite condescending, and somewhat selfish at times. He is noted to have a very fiery personality and is highly competitive causing him to make rash decisions and have a short temper. He also has a very striking flirtatious personality and enjoys goofing around with his friends. Additionally, he is said to be incredibly intelligent, analytical and cunning.

In general, he isn't a forgiving person and finds it hard to understand people who choose not to be swallowed by the impulse for revenge. Durand's very stubborn mindset and self-awareness of his abilities, causes him to think that he is better than most others which makes him appear to have quite the condescending nature. Ironically, he is also very perceptive of the people around him, being able to tell their intentions, emotions and troubles with a simple stare, even while unable to control and distinguish his own emotions.

## Background

Durand was born and raised somewhere in Europe but would come to Kumazawa Academy in the 1st year as an exchange student, before, officially enrolling and moving to Hakodate.

## Statistics

* High School 1st Year
* High School 2nd Year
* High School 3rd Year
* Post-Timeskip

 Stamina
 Game Sense
 Technique
 Speed

 Stamina
 Game Sense
 Technique
 Speed

 Stamina
 Game Sense
 Technique
 Speed

 Stamina
 Game Sense
 Technique
 Speed

Durand is one of the biggest volleyball talents in Japan, and is expresses a mastery over offense and defense. He possesses incredible natural athletic ability and body strength, however his most impressive ability is his vision and intelligence. He is praised for his ability to instantly analyse and asses a situation and use his physical ability to adapt immediately. His spikes bring fear to his opponents and are capable of blowing away opposing blocks and receives through its sheer power and force. What makes Durand an even more challenging foe is his jumping technique and incredible wing span which allows him to extend his hang time in midair and offset the blockers' timing.

His incredible vision and volleyball IQ allows him to play with maximum efficiency in every game and he uses his intelligence and positioning on the block to control the movement of the toss and spike; essentially baiting his opponents into to the block. His core and leg strength gives him a very high and controlled jump. This lets him hit powerful spikes with only a one-step run-up, whereas most spikers require two to three steps. Even when hitting sub-par tosses, Durand is able to maximize the strength of his spikes without losing precision.

**Standing Reach:**

* 1st Year: 268 cm
* 2nd Year: 271 cm

**Jumping Reach:**

* 1st Year: 364 cm
* 2nd Year: 368 cm

**Blocking Reach:**

* 1st Year: 353 cm
* 2nd Year: 356 cm

**Post-Timeskip**:

* Jumping Reach: 390 cm
* Blocking Reach: 368 cm

### Skills

* **Spiking:** Durand is known for his incredibly strong and skilled spike. He is one of Japan's Top 5 Aces by while still only being in his first year, and he quickly became his prefecture's the top hitter. By incessantly practicing his spikes he has become a specialist in straight shots and cross spikes. His straight shot is so accurate that it often hits the edge line itself. His cut shot is equally as dangerous being able to hit the inside attack line on the court. He has an amazing ability to perform feints and wipes and is capable at rebounding the ball off the block. His spike is known to be immensely powerful due to the immense power and strength of his arms and also due to his spiking technique. When Durand spikes, he hits the ball with his entire body, leaning hard to the side as he swings putting as much weight as possible into his hits. This leads to blocks being easily broken through and makes conventional receives near impossible which results in the ball going out of bounds. His prodigious jumping power further amplifies his spiking powers and he is able to perform powerful straight spikes.

* **Jumping Power:** Durand possesses a powerful vertical leap, with each of his jumps said to get higher as a match progresses. This skill facilitates not only his spiking ability, but also allows him to defend better and helps him cover more ground on the block. His jumps have incredible vertical speed and explosiveness which allow him to react to the spike faster than others. He generally jumps with his left leg before spiking, despite his right leg being far stronger, which is due due to his jumping technique that allows him to remain longer in the air against a blocker, even when going up prior to the block getting up, and allows him to spike it over them or spike the ball straight down in a quick attack. When jumping with his right leg, his vertical jump is far more explosive and faster to reach his maximum vertical height. The drawback to his incredible jumping power is that prolonged use of his highest jumps can physically drain him and wear out his stamina exponentially the more he performs.

* **Wide-Range Spike:** Durand is able to perform a wide-range spike In where in addition to using his shoulders, he rotates his entire upper torso while spiking to increase his range, all the while retaining spiking power. It's an incredibly dangerous spike where he uses his approach run and body direction to manipulate the blockers into guarding one direction before attacking to a different angle.

* **Left-handed Spiking**: Due to his position as an opposite hitter, Durand has begun teaching himself how to use his left arm for spiking. This left-handed spike gives the ball a different spin and make his spikes more difficult to receive.

* **Feints**: While he does not use this method much, Durand excels at performing feints at a moments notice and has a high success rate when using it. As he is an ace that uses power, he is able to catch his opponents off-guard when he uses the feint.

* **Spike Serve and Jump Floater**: Durand is known as a "Dual Wielder" and excels at using both the spike serve and jump floater. His spike serve is packed with incredible power while his floaters are fast and unpredictable. This makes it incredibly hard for his opponents to receive since they won't know which type of serve to prepare for until the last minute. His spike serves are one of the most dangerous weapons in his arsenal and have been called "demon serves" from the brutal power and accuracy of the serve. However the accuracy of his jump serve can be quite inconsistent and he struggles to control his serves when agitated or unfocused. In his third year, Durand won the best server award and Post-Timeskip he achieved the fastest VNL serve, clocked at 135.8 kilometres per hour, to become the new record holder for fastest serve in history.

* **Read Blocking**: He's regarded as one of the most skilled blockers in the nation, and forms Kumazawa's Iron Wall with Matsumoto and Takeuchi. His expertise in blocking is mainly derived from his firm grasp of the nuances, such as the proper posture, timing, and jumps. He is a very formidable read blocker and excels at reading the path of the toss and the spike. His incredible allows him to match his blocking timing to the moment the ball is spiked downward. This along with his incredible strength and jumping ability makes him an extremely hard opponent to beat in the air.

* **Sharp Game Sense**: Durand possesses a sharp instinct, akin to a sixth sense for the game. He can quickly adapt to the opposing team's pace and has a good sense of his surroundings, able to effortlessly read others' moves. He is noted to possess "god eyes" and can seemingly predict what plays his opponents will play and how a ball will be spiked. This results in him failing to be tricked by decoys and being able to quickly track down the ball.

* **Incredible Reflexes**: He possesses incredibly quick reflexes and is able to react spontaneously in troublesome situations, however sometimes his body fails to react quick enough even when he is able to see what's coming.

* **Receiving**: Durand is a very talented receiver and shown to be very capable and consistent in this area. He often receives with his chest if he feels his hands will be too slow, this does not hurt him due to his great physique. His receives with his hands are just as impressive, able to return the ball perfectly to the setter and almost always managing to get the ball up.
* **Post-Timeskip Skill Parameter:**

 Setting
 Spike
 Technique
 Block

## Relationships

### Inarizaki High

* **Tatsuki Hirai**: His high school rival.

## Etymology

* His given name, **Alexandre** (アレクサンドル) means "warrior" or "defender of men".
* Alexandre's surname **Durand** (デュランド) means "enduring."

## Trivia

* Favourite Food: Steak and fries with mushroom truffle sauce.
* Current Concern: His Japanese is not good enough.
* He wears dark blue athletic shoes with green details.
* He usually has egg fried rice for lunch.
* He is known to be one of the highest academic achievers amongst the first team members.
* If he didn't play volleyball, he would become a chemical engineer.
* According to the Kumazawa Academy newspaper:
	+ His hobby is playing guitar and relaxing by the beach.
	+ His specialty is cooking.
	+ His best subject is Chemistry.

* Dream Starting Lineup:
	+ **Setter =** Masanori Okamura
	+ **Middle Blockers =** Yusuke Takeuchi & Takeru Matsumoto
	+ **Wing Spikers =** Himself, Satoru Mikami, Shūzo Kamei
	+ **Libero =** Yuri Igarashi
* His volleyball role models are Maksim Mikhaylov, Maxwell Holt and Sebastián Solé.
* Durand currently holds the record for fastest volleyball serve, at 135.8 kilometres per hour, and also holds the record for highest vertical jump and spike in volleyball history.
* Star Sign: Libra.