Sand Volleyball Prepares for Second Season

Head coach Steve Walker and the Arizona sand volleyball begin their season in March, but the team has been hard at work during the fall in preparation for the program’s second season.

The Cats, who will be signing autographs prior to the indoor team’s match with No. 10 Oregon tonight outside of McKale, will get their first taste of competition this season this weekend. On Saturday, the team will travel to Huntington Beach, Calif. to compete in the EVP Winter Holiday Tour. Arizona’s teams (Madison and McKenna Witt, Allie Cook and Hailey Devlin, Emily Kiser and Sarah Seiber, Kaitlynn Leary and Kendall Polan and Taylor Lane and Olivia MacDonald) will be five of 29 teams competing in the Women’s AAA tournament.

“Expectations for the weekend are for our players to play hard while managing the nerves and anxiety that sometimes come with a first competition, while staying within the framework of our system,” said Walker. “I am looking forward to it for sure.”

The team has made plenty of progress and it has been an encouraging few months for Walker, who continues to deal with the challenges presented by a second-year program. Last season, the team was made up primarily of indoor players, who did not make the transition until the winter. This season, there are 10 sand-only players that can train on the sand year-round.

“In a lot of ways this feels like the first season all over again as it’s the first time we’ve had a full complement of players training in the fall,” said Walker. “At this time last year we had only three layers who were exclusively dedicated to sand volleyball.”

Earlier this week, Walker announced the hiring of Olympian Tayyiba Haneef-Park to his staff. The coaching staff has been hard at work preparing the team for the 2015 season.

“It has been a real process to get all 10 players on the same page with regard to technique, our system and the tactics that go along with this game and I am starting to see some real nice improvement in those areas,” said Walker. “It really is exciting to be out in the sand with this group of players and see them develop.”

Fall practice has provided the girls an opportunity to build camaraderie both on and off the sand.

“The team has gelled really nicely from a chemistry viewpoint and they are all student-athletes of character,” said Walker. “Even though we are in our second season, it is a mix of players that have wide ranging levels of experience.”

The team kicks off the 2015 campaign when it welcomes LSU, Tulane, TCU and ASU for the Arizona Invitational on March 6 and 7.