Beach Is Back!
Some defensive plays and takeaways from the Outrigger
I write a lot about coaching volleyball here, but it definitely has an indoor slant. I missed a lot of the 2024 season when I was in Korea, but I’ve been otherwise involved in studying NCAA Beach Volleyball for a long time now. I go down to Gulf Shores (almost) every year and I analyze matches for LMU throughout the year as a stats consultant.
One of my early posts here was about using the Triangle On The Beach. Check it out if you haven’t yet. I’ve also written a bunch of other beach-related posts. Here’s a compendium of some of them.
The Outrigger tournament pitted a bunch of the best NCAA beach teams in the country against each other to start the season. The beach girls at our club have been working on defensive eyework and coordinating blocker staying or pulling with the back-court defender. I’m a big fan of killing 2 birds with 1 stone, so, much like Office Hours posts I’ve been doing for indoor, I thought some of the clips I pulled would make for a good initial post. Later this week, I’ll share some match analysis and go over some Triangle stuff as well.
Here’s 10 clips with some good takeaways for block/defense eyework on the beach.
Stay And Block
This is an out-of-system pass, so the block clearly has a “ready to move” posture here. You can see her almost expecting to pull. However, she gets a good look at the set and sees it coming tight, and decides to stay and block.
I also like the extra adjustment she makes with her feet to get in front of the hitter and seal line. This would be an extremely difficult ball for this hitter to hit cross-court, so the big danger is getting tooled line. Nice eyework by this blocker.
Line Up The Angle
Here’s block/defense fundamentals executed so well it’s almost “nothing to see here.” Even ignoring wind effects, going behind is often valuable because most hitters are better at running their route and hitting behind than defenders are at adjusting their defensive lineups.
The blocker sees the hitter going behind early and shuffles to stay on her blocking lineup. (Although, to be honest, it looks like a 1-call to me and that doesn’t quite look like a line block to me, but I think things are also relative to scouting report and she certainly doesn’t get beat line, so I’m not going to nit-pick a blocker that’s making a huge move and getting way over like that.) I do like the extra call just confirm what she’s blocking as the hitter goes behind.
And then the defender takes a step to the cross-court, and then just another little micro adjustment to get between the hitter and the corner. This is exactly how you want to be lined up when a hitter is going to swing hard in this situation. Really nice and simple and balanced and it turns into a transition kill.
Classic 2-Block
Some more fundamentals that I really liked 2-calls are not as common as 1s. I think they are hard for a lot of teams to get lined up without giving it away a year early and giving up an easy crosscourt roller. This is done really well against one of the most terminal hitters in college volleyball.
See The Set
Blocker recognition of the set is so important. There’s a whole bunch of situations here that put pressure on the blocker eyework:
Blocker is serving and running up.
Offense is going behind
Offense keeps the set somewhat low. (Not super-low, but not a moonball)
If you notice, the setter is squared a bit off the net, which gives you a clue, and then the set flares off the net too. I don’t think good readers process any of that consciously, but when you watch it on video, you can see those micro-clues that give the indication of, “this set is flaring off, so pull.”
