Lynchburg, Va. -- The University of Lynchburg beach volleyball team wrapped up its inaugural season with matches against Erskine and Liberty on Friday.
The Hornets finished the season with a 13-22 record, but the wins and losses are not entirely representative of the season.
In October 2021, director of volleyball Hannah Givens and the Lynchburg athletic department announced beach volleyball was being added for the 2022-23 season.
"I remember thinking, 'this is going to be a lot of fun,'" Givens said, "but where do we start?"
First, Givens needed a team. She and her staff hit the internet looking for future Hornets to start the program with.
However, the process of finding and recruiting beach players is much different than finding indoor volleyball players. There are not as many established websites for recruiting compared to indoor. Givens and her staff found Jordan Palmer, a part of Lynchburg's first pair this season, on SandRecruits.com, one of several small websites for beach players. Givens found other players on social media, and some players even reached out to her for spots on the team.
Mady Shirey, who played at the No. 2 court most often this season, was already going to University of Lynchburg before she knew about the newly-founded beach program. The Rustburg High School girl's volleyball coach ran into Givens on campus over the summer and connected Givens with Shirey.
Shirey had been playing for a local beach club while also on Rustburg's high school team, and she was a perfect match for Givens' new program.
"Lynchburg is an up-and-coming community for beach," Givens said. With Liberty's established program, several clubs like Shirey's, and Lynchburg's new team, Givens is looking forward to seeing more young girls attending summer beach camps and taking up the sport.
"Having beach volleyball will help volleyball on campus overall and also help volleyball in the greater Lynchburg area," Givens said.
Kailey Keough and Landon Spotts are members of both the beach and the indoor teams, and Givens' staff is excited to have several players join both squads next season from all over the country.
"Adding beach has really expanded our reach for recruiting for indoor as well," Givens said.
Givens has had to balance two schedules between indoor and beach, but she has leaned on her two-person staff of Treslyn Ortiz, a teammate from her alma mater Wingate, and newly-hired Olivia Becker-Killelea to navigate coaching two teams a semester.
With long hours, multiple practices a day, and the recruiting grind for two full teams, Givens and her staff have still found joy at the helm of Lynchburg's two volleyball teams.
When asked what her favorite memory from the first beach season was, Givens smiled and laughed as she scrolled through the camera roll on her phone. Hard-pressed to pick just one memory from the hundreds of pictures on her phone, Givens rattled off a few.
"Landon's first flight on the way to LaGrange was a lot of fun," Givens said. "We also got a lot of support and good-luck wishes from other passengers as we departed after the flight attendant announced Lynchburg beach volleyball was on board."
Then there was the team's first trip to Buckee's…
And many team dinners on the road…
And ice cream trip after ice cream trip…
But between memories of Ortiz sleeping in the airport after a long Texas trip and ax throwing in Georgia, Givens learned a lot about what it meant to coach a young, new team.
"We were a bunch of 18-year-olds playing against 21-year-olds," Givens said. "We had a lot to learn about just being a college athlete."
Givens' team was composed of 10 freshmen and one sophomore. With 36 matches on the inaugural schedule including three against the reigning national champions Stevenson, Givens admits there were growing pains.
"Next year, we'll have a better bounce-back mentality," Givens said. "We have to teach having a short-term memory on the court."
Despite the inexperience, Lynchburg still won 13 matches and took part in more than its fair-share of close, hard-fought losses.
The Hornets went into almost every weekend of competition as the youngest in the field. "But when we look back on our first season," Givens said, "we'll see that we pushed the limit and raised the bar for what a first-year program can be."
After navigating their way through four canceled flights and four different airports on the way to a mid-season date in Texas, Lynchburg finally arrived at their match 40 minutes before first serve against Mary Hardin-Baylor. The Hornets fell 5-0 in that first match but bounced back with a 3-2 victory over East Texas Baptist in the second.
"Those girls are freakin' troopers," Givens said.
When they were not playing in Texas or Georgia or Maryland, the Hornets played eight matches right on campus at University of Lynchburg.
"That is something I literally cannot wrap my head around," Givens said. "You don't realize what you actually did until you are standing there on your home courts coaching in a match."
The Hornets went 4-4 on their home sand thanks in part to many hours of hard work from Lynchburg's baseball team, men's lacrosse team, athletic director Jon Waters, head of campus grounds crew Curtis Lane, director of men's and women's golf Michael Veverka, assistant athletic director for sports performance Ed Smith, and many others who dedicated hours building the beach courts. From laying heavy railway ties to spreading gravel and sand, the campus' beach courts are representative of a tight-knit campus community and a blossoming beach culture in Lynchburg.
From the moment Kailey Keough and Jordan Palmer won the school's first match at the second flight against Catawba, Givens knew, "Oh, we can do this. This is going to be fun."
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