Good morning, beach volleyball fans,
I wrote that headline above, but it was mostly paraphrasing this week’s podcast guest, Audrey Koenig. Better known as AK around these parts in Tallahassee, Koenig won the 2023 ACC Co-Indoor Player of the Year alongside the sensational Anna DeBeer. When you’re that good at indoor, considering the plethora of indoor leagues in which to go pro, you can make a decent chunk of change.
Instead, AK chose beach — and thank goodness, for those in Tallahassee, she did.
Just eight months into legitimate beach volleyball training, AK is already one of the most special talents at the net. At this past week’s East Meets West, a Hawaii assistant said AK is the best blocker she’s seen on the beach at the NCAA level. That’s high praise, and likely a result of some serious recency bias, but that’s legitimately how high AK’s ceiling is.
Her story — beach over indoor, her success, how quickly she’s picking up the game — made for a fun podcast this week.
The week in SANDCAST Studios
This past week’s podcast featured Audrey Koenig, whose exploits are mentioned above. You don’t need much more of an intro, other than to know that she is 12-3 on court one this season with previous podcast guest Alexis Durish and is coming off an excellent week in California, going 3-1 with a few convincing wins over Hawaii, Cal, and LMU.
SANDCAST U: Cal is For Real
Madison Fitzpatrick is back on the mic with SANDCAST U, breaking down all things NCAA Beach Volleyball. This week — this was recorded before East Meets West — she’s talking Cal’s historic win over USC, TCU resuming its dominance, UCLA setting itself as the clear No. 1 in the country, and a bit more.
Film Room: Nuss-Kloth vs. Bansley-Bukovec
Film Room is back! This week, I broke down an Olympic pool play matchup between Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth and Heather Bansley and Sophie Bukovec, focusing mainly on the defensive tactics of Nuss and Bansley.
SANDCAST and Volleyball TV are partners! You can get 20 percent off your VBTV subscription if you use the code SANDCAST20.
News Around the Beach
- We have some photo galleries. Stephen Fitzgerald and Will Chu dropped a few galleries of LMU, Long Beach State, Southern Miss, and Mercer as well as UCLA, Morehead State, and Concordia, who is surprising some teams this year. We should have a couple galleries from East Meets West dropping soon.
- Watch SANDCAST Episodes Early! Become a member of our YouTube Channel and you’ll get every piece of content days before anybody else.
- Coming up on Wednesday we have Jeremy Townsend, a PhD in Exercise Physiology who is a Senior Research Manager at AG1, talking all things health, exercise, longevity, and how athletes can extend their timeline as athletes. Informative and fun one here.
Much Love to the sponsors
We’ve been with Wilson Volleyball since day one, and we love the products they make — the best ball on the market, hands down, no questions asked. With season coming up, if you’re looking to get some new equipment, use our discount code: SANDCASTVB for 20 PERCENT OFF.
SANDCAST adds another year with AG1. One of our longest-running sponsors, AG1, is back on the pod for another year. We’ve re-signed with the brand, and have changed our model with them, to a fully affiliate-model. So if you want to stay healthy AND help the show, please order with this link, which comes with a full year of Vitamin D for FREE, as well as five totally FREE travel packs!
We’re officially partnered with Better at Beach! Don’t know how this took so long, seeing the massive overlap between our audiences. So if you want to get Better at Beach, use our code SANDCAST for 10 percent off all of their products, from online classes to in-person camps and more.
Appreciate y’all for listening, reading, and loving the beach like we do.
Have a great week!
SHOOTS!
SANDCAST Team
