eight years old. There, under the direction of coach Bill Lovelace, who has become a prime resource for the sport by steering players he believes in toward USA Volley- ball’s Beach High Performance Program, Hughes would share the court with players like Jane Croson, who is now a freshman outside hitter for University of Hawaii and also plays on the Rainbows’ sand team, and Tara Roenicke, who is now an outside hitter at Long Beach State.
“I would go down to the beach every
Tuesday and Thursday when I was eight to train with Bill, and the older girls were always there,” Hughes says. “Bill would put the younger girls with the older girls, so we were always playing against them, and I think it made me a lot better player.” It wasn’t long before she was mowing down the competition at every beach age- group tournament in sight alongside Justine Wong-Orantes, who is also her teammate on Long Beach Mizuno, a club volleyball team that won the 16 Open division at the 2011 USA Volleyball Girls’ Junior National Volleyball Championships. At one point, Hughes and Wong-Orantes went 70 matches without a loss, and last year, when they were
“She has great reach, is long and lean, can move well in the sand and is a great blocker. She also has a lot of ball control. Not all players who come to the sand from indoor take to it as quickly as she has.”
Southern Californa sand coach Anna Collier on Arizona high school senior Abby Hornacek
both 16, they won the U-18 AAU Junior National Beach Volleyball Championships. Hughes also played with Caitlin Racich at the 2011 FIVB Beach Volleyball Junior World Championships.
Like Ross and Hornacek, Hughes has genetics in her favor – her dad, Rory, is 6-6 and played football and baseball, and her mom, Laura, played both indoor and beach volleyball. Sara, who hits and sets in indoor volleyball, also got plenty of sibling com-
petition. Her sister, Lauren, was an outside hitter at Fairfi eld University in Connecticut, and her brother, Connor, is currently an out- side hitter at University of California-Irvine. “My sister likes to say, ‘Sara is such a good volleyball player because I used to beat her up when I was younger,’” Hughes says with a laugh.
Hughes, who says she’s 5-11 “with volleyball shoes on,” is now practicing two days a week in USA Volleyball’s U-19 High Performance Beach Team winter train- ing block, and her goals include winning national beach championships at Southern Cal and eventually becoming a pro beach volleyball player. Time will tell how far she can take her career, but Lamberson, for one, is impressed with what she sees so far. “Sara is amazing,” Lamberson says.
“She’s a really gifted athlete, and she loves the beach game, and that’s what she wants to do with her life. She’s very explosive for be- ing as young as she is, and she’s won a ton of junior tournaments being a dominant net player, but we’re looking for her to be either a splitter or even a defender. Sara reminds me of Misty. She can get up and bang the ball, but she can also play great defense.”
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