Quad Cities Flexes its Beach Volleyball Muscle

By Ryan Gray

Those lucky enough to live along either coast take for granted the beautiful, sandy beach at their back door for games of two, four or even six. But make no mistake about it, the game is played and loved far and wide, and there are some great ambassadors spreading the word and increasing the number of players.

And footing a large part of the bill.

Quad Cities Volleyball, QC for short, was in the house at Chicago’s North Avenue Beach when the AVP Crocs Tour swung through town last July. Chuck Hersey was also there, traveling volleyball trailer and all, and he even had two sponsored players in the qualifier, Leilani Kamahoahoa and Joy Akins.

A Midwest volleyball lifer but with aching knees, he went behind the scenes to partner with AVP Next and its stable of sponsors (like Bud Light and Wilson), the local parks and rec, and even a local bar or two to organize frequent tournaments for 100 or so members playing around the Quad Cities area, located along the Mississippi River and across the border from Iowa. His events are drawing teams from nearby Peoria, down the river in St. Louis and even from Minneapolis.

If only there were enough beaches to go around.

“Our situation is we’re so limited on sand courts. We don’t have any beaches,” Hersey said. “We have a park that has six sand courts but that’s about the max. There’s another park that has three. Then you get down into the bars that have one court maybe two. It makes it a little difficult to schedule a tournament or have any kind of a big event.”

The “beach” facilities along the Mississippi River are few and far between, and they’re not very conducive to volleyball games. That makes promotion difficult, not only because of the inevitable colder weather that moves in by late September but also because of ingrained attitudes.

“In our area it’s so hard to get kids to transition from indoor to outdoor. Part of it is their season runs into July; then, they have camps and clinics. That’s a huge disadvantage for us,” said Hersey, hoping this new carrot he has to dangle prompts a feeding frenzy of player registrations. “It’s hard to get that mind-set away from six-person hard court. What I’m finding out is no one has really, I think, put enough emphasis on the doubles game.”

Many of the players he runs across are simply not familiar with it, or maybe they’ve watched it on TV but decided it looked like too much work.

“To get better you need to play doubles,” he added. “The mentality in Chicago and Milwaukee with doubles is huge. But if you go a couple hundred miles (southwest) everyone wants to play fours, or they want to play their own format that they’re used to playing.”

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