TALLAHASSEE, Florida – Alexis Durish had done the usual song and dance of a fall season – light, not a ton of competition, mostly building upon what she already knew – prior to this previous iteration at Florida State. Two, in fact.
Neither were anything like what she and the Seminoles experienced from September through November of 2024.
“This was a whole ‘nother level,” she said with a laugh on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter.
It would be easy to dismiss that statement as a young college kid, a 20-year-old junior who was simply being introduced to new concepts that relatively inexperienced players haven’t yet seen. But Durish isn’t any normal 20-year-old college kid. She’s one of the best NCAA beach volleyball players in the country, with a NORCECA gold and a World University Championships silver medal to her name, and legitimate professional victories over an AVP champion in Carly Kan and the winner of the inaugural AVP League in Toni Rodriguez, among others. She’s the owner of 60 collegiate wins to just 11 losses, a CCSA first-team defender who made the jump from court four to one in her sophomore season.
So for Durish to find a “whole ‘nother level,” as she put it, is not something to ignore.
This was no normal fall in Tallahassee.
“My freshman year was a lot more traditional practices,” Durish said. “It was more up and down, what you’re taught in juniors, continuing with that. This fall was more innovation, which was exciting.”
Assistant coach Nick Lucena, a two-time Olympian who played professionally for two decades and still keeps up with the trends of the professional game, saw a reduction in the typical high, up-and-down sets and the proliferation of an offense based less on size than movement, tempo and creativity. Suddenly, the blockers who had come to dominate the game with their formidable size were lost in a haze of innovative offensive playmaking. In a span of a single Olympic quad, small, faster, ball-control oriented teams were the ones populating the podiums, who longer had the bear the weight of 7-foot blockers.
He wanted to bring it to Florida State.
Many of the players in Tallahassee, Durish included, did not.
“I think the first week I absolutely hated it,” she said. “I thought it was stupid, it was never going to work. Sure, it works in men’s volleyball, but this is women’s, it’s not as fast, it’s not as explosive.”
And then, in a handful of fall tournaments and competitions, Durish noticed something: She was getting more open-net opportunities than she ever had. The defenses were constantly scrambled, lost, confused. Cracking open this new playbook was like watching a movie in color for the first time. Suddenly her brain was operating at a level she didn’t know existed, setting up certain plays by passing in specific locations, then setting up others by what she had previously ran.
For the first time in what has already been a tremendous career for Alexis Durish, she was pulling the strings of the defense.
“I think it’s really fun. It’s totally different,” she said. “I really enjoyed it because you get better by sucking, but it wasn’t even that; we got better by trying new things.”
Sometimes, yes, this trying of new things results in comical miscommunications – a player running her route to one pin while her teammate accidentally sets it to the other. Or asking for a tempo set and getting a typical highball, so she must stop, and wait…and wait a touch longer…until it finally comes down and she chops an unorthodox shot, sometimes standing.
“There’s still a whole lot more growth to be done,” she said. “Everyone is in the same boat, we’re all in the dip, so we’ll all rise together. It’s not really a decline because you can always go back to the traditional style, but doing the tempo just elevates that completely.”
“Controlled chaos,” is the phrase most commonly used when referencing the new-look offense at Florida State, and while Durish and her teammates initially took a few days or weeks to embrace that chaos, she’s fully bought in, as she has seen her own game evolve in ways she didn’t previously think were available. Defensively, too, Durish now realizes she has an ability to create chaos of her own.
Despite picking up the game at a young age, beginning indoor in third grade and working with 210 Beach in San Antonio shortly after, she “never understood the importance of the serve,” she said. “In juniors, it was just get your serve over.”
Not this fall at Florida State, where serving, like the aforementioned offense, was a focal point.
“Now I understand where to serve, what to run when you serve it there – that part of the game is still insane to me,” she said. “There’s so much to learn about that.”
And the fact that Durish, already one of the brightest talents in the NCAA, is leveling up, and understanding there are many levels beyond, is a scary thought.
“My first practice here I was so nervous, I was terrified,” she said. “But from there to now, I feel like that’s crazy. The level is still super high but there’s still so much to go.”
As Durish goes, so, too, does Florida State.
