A Cut Above The Rest

For the second consecutive tournament the men's final featured Jake Gibb and Casey Patterson squaring off against Sean Rosenthal and Phil Dalhausser, and just like in Cincinnati, Gibb and Patterson took down the 'W' in Atlantic City.  To be honest I wasn't expecting Gibb and Patterson to have this much success this year, for one being a new partnership, and two, having a duo of two bigs playing together (although this is now the 2nd year of Casey playing as a "small").  Still I don't know where to put this hot streak in perspective.  

I don't want to say that low level teams aren't good, or that the top level teams aren't working very hard to get to where they are, but it is clear that there are two different classes of athletes playing in these tournaments.

For all other sports there is a "separation of the classes", a definitive line that states that you are either a part of the elite group of people that are head and shoulders above the rest, or you are just among the commoners working to get close to that line.  Football and basketball has the NCAA,  baseball has the farm system of A, AA, and AAA ball, hockey has the AHL, and even golf has a junior program and pro card that separates the already have's from the want to's.  Beach volleyball, for better of for worse just mixes everyone together and as you can tell there are the familiar faces rising to the top.

After spending 3 years under the tutelage
of Brett Favre, Aaron Rogers is a top 5 QB who
led the league in QB rating last year at 108.0

At what point do you even consider yourself a "professional" in beach volleyball?  Is it when you qualify for a tournament, make the money rounds, or break $20,000 in a year?  For the sport there is a cyclical problem facing many of its aspiring athletes.  In order for them to get better they need more time and money to dedicate themselves to their training but in order to get extra time and money they need to place higher in tournaments.  So as athletes that are working at least one other job they are in fact probably closer to being low-earning amateurs, than "part-time pros".

This is more than just the creme of the crop rising to the top.  This is like putting the creme of the crop in a centrifuge and selecting the most enriched type.  The low-level players are bogged down other jobs, and trying to land sponsors to just make it to the events, while the top-level pros get to train, condition, and practice exclusively for their sport.  Even though every top-level pro has ground it out through qualifiers at some point in their career, there is a better way to develop players.  In NCAA Football, teams have the right to red shirt a player which allows them to be on the team and practice without using up a year of eligibility.  I think that USAV needs to adopt some type of amateur system that allows players to develop effectively by focusing just on the sport and not on the finances and the travel, then as the creme of that crop rises, hopefully we will get to see some new faces on the podium every other tournament instead of every 5 years.

Congrats to the US teams in the WSOBV

A round of applause is in order for Casey Patterson, Jake Gibb, April Ross, and Jen Kessy for winning the FIVB World Series of Beach Volleyball this weekend.  Way to represent!

How EASY is the beach game? Part 1

"It must be so hard to play moving around, running and jumping in the sand".  I've heard lots of variations of this over the years, but it's hard to really appreciate just how tough the game is until you see a seasoned vet playing next to a court next of first timers who probably are taking their once a year trip to the beach.  

Mike Dodd tried to explain the difficulty of the beach game in this short promo video for the AVP but what he doesn't say is just how EASY it can become in time.

Ok sure stepping out on the sand for the first time, even if you are an experienced volleyball player is a lot like Bambi walking out onto ice for the first time.  The fact is, that pretty much everywhere you go you are walking on a flat surface, so when you step foot on the beach and the ground beneath you suddenly gives way, your body now has to use muscles it didn't have to before to stabilize itself.

Just about every beach player will go through a stage early in the "preseason" where they have to find their "beach legs".  It is during this time we wonder how we were ever capable of hitting the ball over the net or chase down a roll shot, but after more and more time spent in the sand, and as those stabilizing muscles get stronger the game starts to come naturally to us.

Even to a world class athlete, playing on the sand may seem like playing in a completely alien environment at first, but just like a hangover, it gets better over time.  You can't tell me that the best athletes in the world, with 40 inch verticals, 25+ reps of 225 lb bench press, and 4.4 sec 40 times, would be unable to adapt to these conditions.  Given about a month of pure sand conditioning, footwork, and agility drills you can have Derrick Rose looking like Sean Rosenthal, and Colin Kaepernick looking like more tan version of the "thin beast".

Beach volleyball is probably the easiest tough game there is.  The physical aspect isn't incredibly difficult to adjust to.  Ryan Doherty has show us that already.  But there is another world that most people don't see.  The stuff that goes on behind the scenes, the chatter that takes place between your ears is what really makes this game difficult.  I'll talk more about that in Part 2.

Playing Tip: The Appoach

Transitioning from indoor to the beach isn't easy but here are a couple easy tips you can practice to be a more explosive player

Level of play: A
Featuring: Sean Rosenthal and Sean Scott


All playing tips cans be accessed in the "Playing Tips" tab at the top of the page