UH sand volleyball continues to grow

For sand volleyball’s second year as a collegiate sport, Hawaii players have come from Kihei, Waianae, Koloa and pretty much anyplace in California within serving distance of a beach — if sand All-American Jane Croson is serving that outrageous jumper.

Brittany Tiegs, an All-American for Florida State last year, joins Croson on this year’s Rainbow Wahine roster. The redshirt, who won’t be eligible until 2014, calls Stuart, Fla., home. Any farther east and she would have been in the Atlantic.

Ceone Nojima was a jumper for UH track and field last year, but is originally from Gresham, Ore. That’s just east of Portland and some two hours from the Pacific. Indoor transfers Ali Longo (Littleton, Colo.) and Ashley Kastl (Phoenix) are also from beach-free zones, but they will be in the middle of it when UH opens March 15 against Florida International, coached by Volleyball Hall of Famer Rita Buck-Crockett.

About all Scott Wong’s second squad of players has in common is the volleyball, which is a few grams heavier than the one used in the indoor game.

The skills in the sand game, played on a smaller court by doubles teams, are much less specialized. Players multi-task much more.

Wong believes sand’s demand for diversity helped the Wahine go 27-3 indoors. This year, his sand roster has undergone massive renovation, but the goal remains the same.

"As a coaching staff we want to compete and do well," Wong said. "But our first priority is indoor, everybody knows that. We communicate that to the sand-only girls, but beach is their priority. I want them to be able to compete more and learn a different sport, but also help with indoor.

"Like Emily Hartong. She wasn’t an All-American this year without the reps and ball control she learned on the sand."

Hartong, who reached the inaugural sand national championship with partner Elizabeth (Ka‘aihue) Stoltzman, is resting her right shoulder this sand season after taking 1,300 swings indoors. Croson, who won a world beach junior title before she came to Hawaii, is the only returnee of the four Wahine who competed at nationals.

She is surrounded by nine indoor teammates, nine transfers and two California freshmen. Last year Wong had just three sand-only players and one volunteer assistant (Danny Alvarez). Now there are 11 full-time sand players and a new assistant, 25-year-old Michelle Meyer, who has been working with the sand-only players since fall.

"She has made my life enjoyable again," Wong said.

He was swamped last year, starting a program from scratch and creating a schedule for a fledgling sport with just 15 teams, all of whom have tiny travel budgets. Home games consisted of two tournaments at Queen’s Beach in Waikiki. This year it consists of the first two days of the season, at Queen’s Beach again, with the campus courts still not finished.

"Last season I really didn’t want to recruit a kid and say ‘Hey, come to Hawaii,’ when I didn’t know what sand volleyball was going to be like," Wong said. "I didn’t want to promise anything I didn’t know for sure. But it was a real successful season. It’s going to be around, growing, be a solid NCAA sport.

"We’re working toward our goal of having two separate teams — indoor and sand, with maybe four to six players crossing over. That’s our vision of how it will work out."

There are twice as many teams this year, all in the West and Southeast except for Nebraska, which broke the ice — so to speak — as the first Midwest program. Arizona and South Carolina have confirmed for next year and 27 more teams are "considering" the sport according to the American Volleyball Coaches Association, which oversees it until it achieves NCAA status. Those include Tennessee, Notre Dame, Air Force and Hawaii Pacific.

When 40 teams are committed for two consecutive years it becomes an official NCAA sport. That could happen as early as 2016. It’s hard to imagine that it won’t. The Wahine practice at Queen’s most days, arriving at 6:40 a.m. to have the courts constructed by the time it is light. Tourists take it all in and the players barely leave the courts before new nets are going up.

When they can’t get permits, they practice at Ala Moana, or try. Once they showed up at 6 a.m. and two of the three available courts were already up and being used, with flashlights.

The beach game is big here, for obvious reasons. Wong, Meyer, Alvarez, Croson and the rest of the Wahine hope it catches on everywhere else.