Women's volleyball team takes to sand

For A&M-Commerce volleyball, the spring semester is usually just about training and announcing the new players for the upcoming season. This season, Head Coach Craig Case and his players decided to take training outside of the Field House to the sand courts.

"We talked a lot about doing a sand component to our spring season," Case said. "It's an amazingly more intense conditioning component to what we do on the court."

Sand volleyball is becoming more and more popular at universities across the nation, according to Case, and it got its start among the younger age groups.

"One of the other things happening right now is it's becoming a lot more popular with high school players," he said. "The USAV (USA Volleyball) Beach component is the fastest rising sport amongst youth female athletes in the nation right now. We're trying to keep our eye on that and probably going to do some recruiting at some of the beach tourneys this season and get a feel of some of those players."

Case said he decided to have his team start training on sand because it is a big help in working out on-court attributes.

"Very few indoor players go out and have the same level of success as they do outdoor, where as most outdoor players are very good indoors," he said. "So we tried to tie some of that into what we were doing. I think most of your competitive sand volleyball is 2s, and because of that it forces you to well round your game. In most of our systems on court, it makes you a better fit. Most of our players are expected to be able to do everything, so having people train to be sand players will make them better in our systems."

Volleyball in the sand contains a few different elements for players to master than the indoor version of the sport, Case said.

"From a training standpoint, the power game is significantly less prominent in sand volleyball," he said. "You have to have a lot better court awareness in knowing where you're at and where you're trying to hit. The hardest thing to overcompensate for is you just can't change directions very fast, so you have to read very accurately. You've got to move in the right direction."

Case said all of his squad were set to compete at a sand volleyball tournament this spring that never materialized. But, the future of this version of the sport at A&M-Commerce may still be bright.

"The other thing that's kind of on the forefront is the NCAA just created sand volleyball as an emerging sport. We're kind of in the works with that as well. There's a lot of really exciting things going on right now with sand volleyball, and it'll be interesting. It's big right now, and at some point I would love for us to look at the feasibility of that type of a program as a varsity sport here. I think we've got a lot of things in place that would make it a great opportunity."