TOUKON
"The fighting spirit of Alabama"
As the landscape of volleyball continues to change, along with the number of beach scholarships available, we're switching up Performance Beach as well. Beach volleyball is the fastest growing collegiate sport, having grown by 50% in just 2 years, and now boasts 93 collegiate volleyball programs, a historically unprecedented growth.
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Beach volleyball used to be just a great way to cross-train for indoor volleyball, but now that it is recognized as a NCAA sport with a National Championship, many girls are turning to becoming dedicated beach players. Here at Performance Beach, we're excited to start a new journey promoting dedicated beach players along with cross-training indoor players.
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In the past few years, we've seen a distinct three classifications of beach players:
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Dedicated beach players who have no desire to play indoor volleyball. These players have the desire to play collegiate beach volleyball only.
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Players, particularly younger players, who play indoor and beach volleyball equally and haven't decided which sport they want to focus on playing or want to play both sports collegiately.
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Dedicated indoor players who see the value of cross-training on the beach to better develop their overall skills and improve their agility/speed and overall volleyball intelligence.
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We are using our observations and research from the past few years to better the Performance Beach program as a whole.
Coaches
We are very fortunate to have Michael Haars as our lead Performance Beach coach. He is the current head coach at Jacksonville State University.
Coach Mike has over a decade of experience coaching club volleyball on both the beach and indoor circuits. He attended Auburn University from 2007-11, where he was an outside hitter and setter for the Tigers' club team. He helped start that program on the Plains while obtaining a degree in Mechanical Engineering. As a player, he competed in Men's Open Beach 4's/2's and Grass 3's tournaments across the south and northeast hosted by AVP America. In addition, he earned international, professional playing and training experience in Italy and Slovenia with Bring It Promotions in 2012.
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Club Executive Director, Julie Dailey, has been coaching volleyball for 36 years and beach specifically since 2005. She is a former indoor player and graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she still holds several records. After graduating, she gained beach experience with Team Mossimo 4-man and Team Paul Mitchell 4-man. From 1991-1996, she competed in and won the Open Women's Championship at the Fudpuckers annual tournament.
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Additionally, we have Coach Ashleigh Garrard who played collegiate indoor and beach volleyball, graduating from Jacksonville State University. She is a club alum and has been coaching for a total of 8 years.
Coaches Cal Hose, Kyra Hunter, and Morgan Hubbard will be assisting.
Current and/or Former Players at:
