Good morning, beach volleyball fans,
I will continue my trend of beginning this newsletter with where I’m writing it: A bus on the way back from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where we — we being Florida State — opened our season at the Beach Burg Invitational. We finished the weekend a clean 5-0, including a fun 3-2 win against LSU. That match, as could be expected of the eighth-ranked team in the nation in LSU, and the sixth in FSU, was a coin flip, and the rest of the weekend followed suit at Southern Miss. Side note: If you’re ever in Hattiesburg and looking for some good coffee, Mulvi’s was a sweet little find.
But many many miles down the road and over the Pacific, at Hawaii’s annual season-opening tournament?
Bedlam.
LMU logged its first win over USC in program history…and then USC promptly turned around and beat UCLA…who earlier had stumped TCU…who beat a strong Stanford team…who also beat USC…who then finished the weekend with a win over TCU.
Whew.
Parity reigns at the moment in what could be labeled the Tier One of NCAA Beach Volleyball, which includes all of the teams mentioned above, as well as Cal Poly, Long Beach, and a handful of others. It is going to be a fun season to follow, and we’re fired up we’ve brought on Madison Fitzpatrick to cover it for us. Her next update is scheduled for after the annual East Meets West in a few weeks, but we might rush-order one for before then, because Hawaii was positively wild.
And I’m personally fired up we brought on two of the coaches in the Tier One category, John Mayer of LMU and Billy Allen of Stanford, in an attempt to steal all of their secrets for this week’s podcast, which has had by far the most positive feedback of any we have done in a long time.
The week in SANDCAST Studios
This past week’s podcast featured John Mayer and Billy Allen, the longtime hosts of the Coach Your Brains Out Podcast who are also influential figures in the NCAA coaching world. Mayer has led LMU into an era of unrivaled dominance in the WCC, and the Lions have a decent case as the best team in the country. Billy, meanwhile, is in his second year assisting at Stanford. We chat about the coaching life, digging into some of the finer nuances of motor learning, ecological dynamics vs. repetition, getting the most out of college kids, and a whole lot more. For those keeping score: John: 1, Billy: 0 this season in head-to-head Coach Your Brains Out matchups:
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
- FSU Beach Volleyball launches its own podcast. And you can give it a follow on Spotify and Apple and wherever else y’all get your pods. The audio is on its own separate channel, as you can see above, but the video portion will live on SANDCAST until we figure something else out. On this week’s episode, head coach Brooke Niles previews the year ahead, where Niles is overseeing her youngest team ever, a team in which seven freshmen picked up a win on the opening weekend.
- 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 one of our most popular guests of all-time: Trevor Crabb. Get your popcorn ready. Members will be able to watch later today. Non-members gotta wait ’till Sunday.
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
