Establishing a beachhead: recruiting beach volleyball players a challenge for ASU

TEMPE, Ariz. — ASU fledgling women’s beach volleyball program is in its third year, but recruiting players that fit the sand version of the game at the Pac-12 level is proving difficult.

“It’s challenging to get tall girls to commit to just playing beach because they have a bigger chance of getting a scholarship for indoor, ” said ASU sand volleyball coach Brad Keenan. “There’s a lot of 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-8 girls that are like, ‘I’m beach only now.’

“And I’m like ‘Well, I already have 15 5-foot-7 girls, so I need to find someone who’s 6-foot-1, 6-foot-2 that can block.’ ”

ASU’s sand team currently has eight players who are listed between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-9. The Sun Devils have five players listed between 5-foot-10 and 5-foot-11, with four players listed at 6-feet or taller.

Keenan said that next season he is planning to have 20 girls who are strictly sand players, most of them coming from California, Florida, Texas and Arizona.

“California’s the biggest,” Keenan said. “Arizona’s actually got a pretty big club scene. A former (Association of Volleyball Professionals) guy, Ryan Mariano, came out here and opened a club. And there’s probably two or three other beach clubs out here, too, so there’s a ton of kids out here.”

The challenge in recruiting for sand volleyball is to convince tall players to participate in a sport that is very different from conventional volleyball, which is played with six players rather than two.

The ASU volleyball programs, both indoor and sand, have had women transition from the traditional indoor game to the beach game. Some players use their indoor eligibility, and then compete outdoors.

Senior Bianca Arellano played four years with the indoor program, and has spent two seasons on the beach team as a graduate student.

“In indoor you can kind of find out, ‘Hey, I actually can be flexible with all of these different skills and I actually can set and I can play defense and I can serve. So I think I’m going to go test out my skills on the beach,’ ” Arellano said.

Unlike the indoor game, in which players can specialize at a certain position, beach partners must be able to pass, set, block, spike and serve.

“I think the transition was pretty easy because, as a setter, I’m looking at all different parts of the game” Arellano said. “So it definitely benefitted me.”

Arellano is an example of an indoor player who successfully transitioned from the hardwood to the beach. But indoor coach Sanja Tomasevic would prefer to keep her players working on the indoor game.

“Seeing how much improvement we’ve made as a team, when we dedicated a whole spring indoor, I’m going to have a really hard time letting kids go play beach,” she said. “If we let them play beach, that means we are giving them up three, four times a week.”

Keenan also is trying to keep his player on the sand only. He said the pool of players focused on sand is still smaller compared to indoor. But it is growing, especially in the midwest and and east.

“I played indoor throughout my high school and I also played beach during the summers,” said Madison Berridge, a senior on ASU’s sand volleyball team.

Berridge, who grew up in California, is part of the first class at ASU who will play four years in the sand game.

She said that the decision between indoor and outdoor was difficult, but the outdoor game was appealing because of the responsibility each player has during a match.

“I played indoor for so long, since I was about 11,” Berridge said. “As tough as it was, I really liked the pressure being on me and one other person, instead of five other girls. In indoor you can’t control a lot, so it’s hard when it’s out of your control and you’re like, ‘I just want to do more.’ I really wanted it to just be on me and my partner.”

Players like Berridge who strictly play outdoor in college rare.

Yet Arellano, who came to ASU on an indoor scholarship, believes more players will gravitate to the beach game, which has grown in popularity since men’s and women’s beach volleyball were added to the Olympics at Atlanta in 1996.

“Girls are starting to play so young, they’re starting to specialize on the beach so young,” Arellano said. “I mean 11-,12-, 13-years old, they’re now, ‘You know what? I’m just going to stick with beach for now.’ Then they grow as that type of player where they understand the dynamics of two-on-two instead of six-on-six. It’s definitely a different game. I think it’s growing to kind of be a completely separate sport.”