HERMOSA BEACH, California – “So you’re telling me,” I began during our most recent episode of SANDCAST with Kyle Friend, “that your new career is commentating, coaching, and podcasting about beach volleyball?”

He smiled.

I smiled.

A career path that hadn’t existed prior to the advent of Volleyball World in 2021 now has room for two.

“Travis Mewhirter’s resume right there,” he said, laughing.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that Friend has increased his presence on beach volleyball channels all over the globe. During the Olympic Games, he served as a wonderful co-host on SANDCAST, breaking down pool play, previewing the playoffs, reacting to Sweden and Brazil and Ana Patricia vs. Brandie Wilkerson and all the rest. In Hamburg for an Elite16 in August, he traveled to Germany, where he debuted his professional career indoors, to commentate in person for the first time. Together, we were given the keys to the metaphorical content car at Beach Volleyball World, shooting a preview, adding in interviews, chatting on the mic with Laura Ludwig and Sven Winter, meeting up with Anouk Verge-Depre and Joana Mader for a podcast, recapping it all after eight straight matches on the mic. And even during those matches we tinkered and experimented. We shot an introduction from the roof, one from a balcony, a few on the court as warm-up swings buzzed by our heads.

Some worked.

Some didn’t.

All ere fun.

Finn Taylor, the Volleyball World CEO who has overseen three straight years of massive profits for the innovative company, loved it.

“That,” he told us afterwards, “is what I want beach volleyball to look like.”

And that is, more or less, what Kyle Friend has been brought in to do: Make beach volleyball look and feel like, well, beach volleyball.

But wait wait wait, hold up for just a sec: Isn’t Friend still playing? Isn’t he the partner, both on the court and off, with Tim Brewster? Did he get hurt?

There was no injury. Friend is perfectly healthy. Beyond healthy, in fact, the 35-year-old is thriving in his new role in the sport.

Coaching April Ross and Alix Klineman, Olympic gold medalists, to a playoff berth in the inaugural AVP League? Getting paid, rather than the other way around, to travel the world and stay ingratiated, woven into the current fabric, of the sport he loves? Able to support his partner, Tim Brewster, from a more zoomed-out lens, as both a pseudo coach and not-so-neutral-but-supportive-nonetheless third party?

Somebody pinch him already.

“It’s been very fun,” he said on SANDCAST. “I haven’t felt this huge urge or missing piece in my life that I’m itching to play or I’m missing out on these tournaments. That’s confirmation to me that I’m in a good place, the timing – the universe works in unique ways. One door closes, one door opens, kind of just how it works, how it flows. I’ve been really happy. It’s been nice to take a step back on a quest to be the absolute best.”

It wasn’t the plan. Not necessarily. Friend began the 2024 season as a player with no indicator that he’d need, or even want, a shift in the game.

“The passion and the motivation for me has never waned,” he said. “There’s always been joy for me to practice.”

Sure, at the end of 2023, as he and Brewster hit the fall Asian circuit – Challenges in China and the Philippines – practices became more of a grind. But good luck finding an athlete who doesn’t experience a bit of burnout when the season begins in February in Doha and ends in November in the Philippines. It was remarkably normal. Nothing to see here. Only Friend, who is highly attuned to the slightest shift in his own internal balance, saw something there.

“That was an indicator for me,” he said. “It was the first time I had felt that. I was happy to practice, I didn’t care what we were doing, I was just touching a volleyball on the beach, I’m so happy. Seven years of beach in addition to five years of pro indoor volleyball, it’s been one speed and I’ve loved it. For the last seven years, it’s been one goal: train super hard, get as good as you can, get as much information from coaches as you could, try to take as much as you could, the pressure of qualifiers and points and relationships and partnerships and managing all that and organizing all that and finding money, staying afloat…”

He trails off for a beat, as if taking a conversational sigh. All three members in the room – Friend, Tri Bourne and me – got it.

It’s a beautiful life, playing beach volleyball. Takes you places. Introduces relationships in your life that wouldn’t happen in a million years otherwise.

But it’s a lot.

And when Volleyball World approached Friend and offered him a gig to continue traveling, continue building those relationships, expand a skill set in which he had shown promise, “I couldn’t say no.”

“There was relief,” he said. Relief that he didn’t have to do what so many others must, leave the game as a player and all but leave it for good. Venture into the dreaded “real world,” where a job at a desk awaits. Relief that he could have everything he currently had, only better. His shoulder, the right one that was constantly sore from literal decades of swings? Never felt better. Knees? Not a crack. Back? Limber as it’s ever been.

“What makes me happy is I haven’t left the game of volleyball. I’m still in it,” he said. “I’m still up to date. I haven’t left the players and the people which makes this sport so lovable and all the passion that people have for the sport and wanting to see it grow. I still have that desire to help the sport and give back and whatever that looks like, to make an impact through coaching or building up the [AVP] League or supporting younger players, I still get to do that. I think the feeling would be a lot different for me if I just separated cold turkey. I don’t think I could handle that very well.”

Now, with one last event with Volleyball World in 2024, the Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha in December, he doesn’t have to. Scheduling has already begun for 2025. There’s more experimenting to be done – fantasy beach volleyball? New intro locations and styles? On-court interviews in front of thousands of screaming Brazilians? – more fun to be had, more ways to build this game he’s loved for so long, and one he doesn’t have to leave in the least.

“It’s been very fun,” he said. “I haven’t felt this huge urge or missing piece in my life that I’m itching to play or I’m missing out on these tournaments. That’s confirmation to me that I’m in a good place, the timing – the universe works in unique ways. One door closes, one door opens, kind of just how it works, how it flows. I’ve been really happy.”