Tidewater Volleyball Association took a different approach when the club created their Juniors Beach Division, named 757 Beach. Over the past 10 years, as Executive Director, Kristina Wojieck observed the club landscape, she saw several different models of trying to merge the 2 ‘sports’:
- indoor clubs trying to shorten their club season and switching to a beach season
- clubs trying to follow the same model as indoor to create a beach club
- beach clubs that only trained but coaches did not travel
- clubs that would only focus on the elite players and would only travel to high level tournaments
TVA’s mission statement is to promote, in all ways possible, the development of volleyball, and that led Tidewater down their own path when they made the decision truly to add a beach program. The club leadership knew that in order to stay true to their mission they needed to offer beach youth training year around and COVID actually helped during the club’s growing stages.
“When I accepted the position of Executive Director in November of 2018, one of the first questions I asked was, ‘We live at the beach and have an indoor beach facility. Why do we not have a year round youth beach component?” said Wojieck.
She was faced with two main problems:
1) The first, was finding a coach that had the time to commit to a year round beach component. TVA had attempted to have a youth beach component and even had some National Beach Champions, but it become a sustainable product.
2). The second problem was and it still is to this day, the calendar for indoor volleyball. Nationally the indoor club season goes through July, in addition, club tryouts in our area are, also, in July. Not to mention, that youth beach volleyball also competes for time from all the indoor college camps, high school training sessions and even the high school season itself.
When COVID hit one of Tidewater’s goals was to keep the youth active and involved at a time when everyone was nervous about playing sports. Beach volleyball became more appealing because it was outside where masking wasn’t mandatory, and it was offered in smaller groups settings. Instead of needing 12 players to compete, the club only needed 4 or 8 , doubles and quads. Everyone felt comfortable with those parameters.
Wojieck had the opportunity to hire Matt McLaren as TVA’s Juniors Beach Coordinator in the summer of 2020. Matt was an avid beach player and a Penn State Alumni. She offered him a part time position at 20 hours a…
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