MBHS Sets the Pace in Girls Beach Volleyball

By Gabrielle Taylor 

As winter comes to an end and spring finally arrives, so does the new season of spring sports. Girls beach volleyball has officially started practices, games, and tournaments. Pre-season started in late Jan. and the first day of tryouts started on Feb. 3, and continued through that week. Over 30 girls tried out for the team this year and with the new coaching techniques of Andrew Johnson, everyone made the team. 

MBHS has a new beach volleyball hire, head coach Johnson was employed earlier this year and this is about his fifth year of coaching. He has coached multiple schools and organizations before, here in the local area and other places. He played beach volleyball at Cal Poly SLO, but has also played most of his life before college. “Beach volleyball has always been an important part of my life, and I’m happy I got to continue with it after college through coaching and international league,” said Johnson. Coach Johnson, coach Cross and players have been successful with improvement and are overall enjoying the season. “I think we’re actually going to do very well, just in the preseason games we’ve already beaten some of the teams who are not in our league,” said Duane Cross, assistant coach for girls beach volleyball. Both Cross and Johnson are excited to see where the rest of the season takes them. 

Due to the methods of Johnson, everyone who tried out this year made at least the practicing team, as opposed to having only 12 people make the team, as it was previously. With a large number of girls on the practice team, only 20 girls (10 teams of two) made the traveling team, and only 12 girls (six teams of two) made the starting team. “The team this year is more of a team and all friends with each other, more coherent. Coach Andrew is super duper cool and definitely helps us win games and have fun,” said sophomore Janelle Euberla. 

Girls on the team are making huge improvements in their skills and learning new things from the coaches. All of them had something good to say about coaches and sport. “I think he's really chill and I feel like everyone is getting better with his coaching,” said sophomore Jasmine Euberla, when asked about Johnson and his style of coaching. 

MBHS beach volleyball is already successful with games, players and coaches. The team and coaches are anticipating a good league season as the pre-league has already gone well and shown a promising future for girls beach volleyball this spring.