There’s plenty of overlap between University of North Carolina Wilmington’s championship-winning indoor volleyball team and the school’s new beach volleyball team. And while historic success on the indoor court hasn’t yet translated to the sand, a pair of wins in the program’s first-ever home tournament April 2-3 showed progress.
Spectators gathered around the perimeter of Dig & Dive’s sand courts to watch the Seahawks go 2–0 Saturday, collecting victories over Stevenson University and Coastal Carolina, and dominate the pairs tournament Sunday. With the wins, the Seahawks improve to 7–10 overall in their inaugural season.
The Seahawks weren’t overwhelming favorites heading into the tournament, assistant coach David Fischer said, so he was impressed with how the players stepped up.
“I thought all our teams, at times, played better than I’ve seen them play,” he said.
The team opened with a 5–0 win against Stevenson followed by a 4–1 win in an exhibition match over Winthrop. They finished the day by holding off Coastal Carolina 3–2.
Sunday, pairs from all the schools faced off in a bracket tournament. UNCW pair Bella Borgiotti and Katie McCullough won the Gold Bracket by beating teammates Maddy Kline and Ashleigh Crutcher in the final. Another Seahawks pair, Courtney Mullinax and Lindsay Jones, took first in the Exhibition Bracket.
Fischer said a home court advantage likely contributed to his players’ success. Teams usually play better at home, he said, because they aren’t physically drained by travel. There’s a “pride factor” too, he said, in knowing they put in the time and effort to prepare the courts and hearing the cheers of friends and family in the crowd.
Many of the players are still new to the beach volleyball tournament format, he added, “so that always generates its own excitement and nerves.”
Of the 17 women on UNCW’s team, only six specialize in beach volleyball, while the rest have more experience playing indoors. Of those players, most are on UNCW’s indoor team, which plays in the fall, while a few are UNCW graduate students who played indoors during their undergraduate years.
Student athletes are allowed to play four years in one sport and a fifth year in a separate sport, and NCAA’s distinction between beach volleyball and indoor volleyball means grad students like Ashleigh Crutcher and Bethany Gesell get to play one more year of NCAA volleyball.
But while they’re separate sports on paper, Fischer said they’re essentially the same game.
“My experience is that volleyball players play indoors when the weather is bad and outdoors when the weather is good,” he said.
Still, he had to help his indoor players adjust certain parts of their game: style of play, to account for one teammate instead of five, and equipment, to account for the weather.
Positioning on a court with only two people is much different, he said, and communication becomes even more vital. The coaches form each two-person team based on weeks of mixing up the pairings and analyzing how players’ skillsets and personalities mesh.
Equipment is different, too — the women don’t wear kneepads but they do occasionally wear sunglasses and hats, which can be hard to get used to, Fischer said. It was also challenging, in January, to find socks and gloves that would keep their hands and feet warm but wouldn’t hinder their hitting.
In the fall, many members of the beach team will transition back to the indoor court as reigning conference tournament champions. While Fischer admitted it would be hard to surpass last year’s historic season, in which the team earned its first-ever NCAA bid, he believes the work his players do on the sand will make them even better on the indoor court.
“I think the well-roundedness that beach volleyball teaches will help our indoor team,” he said. “The communication requirements, the leg strength and the core strength.”
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