‘If you don’t dream big, what’s the point?’

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Brooke Niles told her not to do it. It wasn’t the time to take on the corporate life, to leave all of her talent on the beach in the name of things like stability and finances and normal schedules. Brook Bauer, 23 years old then, was still so young, with so much promise. And besides, the MBA she had just earned from Florida State University, after attaining a bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine, wasn’t going anywhere. Her shoulder, her legs, her athleticism and ability to compete at the highest level in the country and, perhaps one day, the world, however, had a time limit. Niles, Florida State’s longtime beach volleyball coach, nudged Bauer to take a shot at a career on the beach. Let the full-time jobs come later, if at all.

But Bauer is a self-described “all-in type of person,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I didn’t really know — I still don’t — what my plan was in a way. But I was like ‘I’m going to exploit all these cool opportunities. I’m going to go to all of these job fairs and let me do all of these things.’ And then I used my fifth year at FSU to gage if I really want to play volleyball after college because I did have a time where I was unsure about that.”

So she lined up a job at a consulting firm, under the impression that she could pursue a life in two different suits at the same time. She began in September of 2022, a time of year that typically lends itself to working in an office while missing few, if any, events on the beach. But last fall was an unusually busy one, and Bauer had to watch as her friends and partners competed in Chicago and the Maldives and Dubai and South Africa. While her peers racked up medals and points and experiences in faraway and exotic locations, she was in an office…auditing? Doing a job she hadn’t even trained for or studied?

“I know your job isn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows but I was not finding any sort of fulfillment or desire to level up in the organization or any sort of cue that I would normally look for,” she said. “It just didn’t fit me. Not only that but it was holding me back.

“I was waking up at 4 a.m. to lift and condition, had meetings at 7 that would run late into the night, and then trying to practice at 7 p.m. It really adds up. I wasn’t sure for my personality that could work for…