Ben Prescott, reporter

Trace Wells, reporter

Berry College has added beach volleyball to its spring sports season, bringing familiar faces from indoor volleyball to the new team.

Athletic Director Angel Mason released a statement on Sept. 13 announcing the new sport.

“We are excited to announce the addition of beach volleyball,” Mason said. “When considering our sports sponsorship and what programs we could add, beach volleyball was a natural fit with the growth of the sport and the success of our indoor program.

Berry decided to add beach volleyball as a spring sport to provide more opportunities for women athletes in compliance with Title IX. Debbie Heida, chief of staff at Berry, expressed similar sentiments to Mason and mentioned that the school had been looking into adding a sport for a while.

“We’ve looked at this for a couple years and decided the time is right to do this,” Heida said. “This gives us the ability to enhance where we are already successful.”

Since this will be the inaugural season of beach volleyball, Heida discussed how the team would compete in tournaments and what the plans are to add courts or innovate the current courts on campus.

“We would not host any tournaments this year, we would travel to tournaments,” Heida said. “The goal is to have courts in place by January, we’ll be making a decision about whether [the Richard’s courts] really work for us and how we might manage what needs to be on there over the course of the next couple of months.” 

Heida also announced that Indoor Volleyball Head Coach Caitlyn Moriarty will also be the head coach for beach volleyball. Moriarty has been the indoor volleyball head coach since 2016 and has led the team to successful seasons since taking over the helm. Moriarty has been named the AVCA South Region Coach of the Year and SAA Conference Coach of the Year, receiving each of these honors twice. She has also led the team to three consecutive SAA Conference Championships and appeared in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 NCAA Tournaments. 

While indoor volleyball and beach volleyball have a vast number of similarities, there are multiple differences in how the game is played. In beach volleyball the court is smaller, and the ball is larger, softer and lighter than the ball used for indoor volleyball. There will only be two players on the beach court during the game compared to the normal six players that they are used to. Also, the players will have to deal with different types of weather that they may not be used to. Coach Moriarty talks about how she expects the team to adjust. 

“Some of the element factors I think will just be part of the game,” Moriarty stated. “You know, learning to adjust to different climates, different wind speeds and having to probably cover some more area than they’re used to in a typical indoor game. All of our players are pretty well-rounded players in that they have the ability to pass, hit and serve so from an athleticism standpoint I don’t see that being an issue.” 

Not only is this an opportunity for a new style of volleyball here at Berry, but it also introduces another advantage to the recruiting process here as well. 

“I think it opens the door to really strong indoor volleyball players that also want to play beach,” Moriarty said. “At the Division I level a lot of times you have to choose so we’re hoping to target division caliber players, which we always have, but ones that are also interested in beach.” 

Along with this being the inaugural season for beach volleyball, this is also the first season that the American Volleyball Coaches Association will be hosting a national championship specifically for Division III beach volleyball. Coach Moriarty talks about how this adds to the excitement of this upcoming beach season while and what kind of expectations they have for this year. 

“This is kind of neat that this is our first year competing and it’s also the first year that there is a championship to be one specifically for Division III,” Moriarty expressed. “We’re excited to do something challenging but different, when people ask me, ‘what’s the next step? How do we win that national championship on the indoor side of things?’ you know, adding beach volleyball facilitates that and it helps us.” 

This year Berry will be looking to compete for a national title on the indoor volleyball courts and out on the beach volleyball courts as well. The first ever beach season here at Berry will begin in Mar., this spring.