South Carolina’s hire for its new head beach volleyball coach, and just the second in program history, was a splashy one: Jose Loiola.
The Gamecocks announced on Friday morning that Loiola, the assistant for Jenny Johnson Jordan at UCLA for the past two seasons, will be taking over the head coaching position, vacated by longtime coach Moritz Moritz after the 2025 NCAA Beach season.
“Jose Loiola’s background and knowledge in beach volleyball is unmatched,” South Carolina athletic director Jeremiah Donati said in a statement. “His success as a player, coach and leader in the sport speaks volumes as to the caliber of coach we are bringing to Columbia. His passion for the sport will build a positive culture in the program. I am excited to have Jose as our beach volleyball coach.”
As he should be.
Loiola is one of the greatest players of all time, and certainly one of the most unique, exciting talents to ever play the game. His 55 wins rank him No. 12 all time, with 13 of those coming in 1997 alone, when he and Kent Steffes reigned supreme. For four straight years on the AVP – from 1995-1998 – he was voted the Best Offensive Player, and in 1997, Most Valuable. When he was voted Rookie of the Year in 1993, he became the first non-American to be named as such.
“Jose could go up, jump and hit the ball over the block and we would win every match,” Steffes said in a hilarious story about playing with Loiola. “But Jose would get bored. He’d say he wanted to hit it straight down, and he’d hit it into the bottom of the net, and we would give up a point. Everybody else knew what was going on: Jose was bored. One thing you do not want is a bored Brazilian.
“He’d hit it straight down, and Jose’s like ‘I want to hit the ball straight down and it’ll bounce really high and the crowd will go wild.’ And I say ‘Yeah, that’s the problem.’ The problem isn’t that he’s hitting the ball into the bottom of the net, the problem is we have a bored Brazilian. So I said ‘OK, I’m going to set the ball, you’re going to come running in, and you’re going to act like you’re going to crank the ball, and the blocker is going to go into your angle and you’re going to turn and crank the ball down the line.’ And he goes ‘OK, OK.’
“Perfect, Jose passes perfect. So I set him way inside, guy goes angle, and Jose bounces line and it goes straight up and the crowd goes nuts and he goes ‘Now, Kent, I feel really good.’ And I say ‘Good, can we hit high lines now?'”
After retiring as a player in 2009 — and bouncing quite a many balls in the process — Loiola picked up his first professional coaching stint in 2014, working with, among others, Casey Jennings and Jeremy Casebeer, Theo Brunner and Nick Lucena, Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng, and helped Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb to multiple Manhattan Beach Open titles.
In his second year at UCLA in 2025, Loiola was voted the AVCA Assistant Coach of the Year after a season in which the Bruins finished 30-6 and earned the top seed at the NCAA Championships.
Now, for the first time, Loiola will head his own program.
“I am super excited for the opportunity to become head coach of this program,” the 55-year-old Brazilian native said. “I feel like everything I have done up to now — going back to get a degree, coaching all different levels of athletes — have led me to this point. The University of South Carolina has a beautiful facility for student-athletes. With my passion for this sport and commitment to develop the player and the person, together, we will make this a place where potential becomes legacy.”
