So for our entire crew (during summer), one mom would pick everyone up, drop us off at the beach, and then one other mom would pick us up. And we were down there from 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning until 3, 4, 5 in the afternoon almost every day. Which was cool because not only was it my team, but there were a bunch of guys from Santa Bar- bara High and Dos Pueblos High, so I have really fun memories as a freshman, sopho- more, junior going down there and having Court 6 down there - Court 5 was the main court - and having literally like a hundred or two hundred high school kids, guys and gals, surrounding the court with us playing on it 2 on 2, and having like 10 ups, because there were so many players down there who wanted to play. It’s one of the really cool memories that I have, and probably one of the reasons why I started really loving it.
Cobian: Just building the community down there. Rogers: Yeah, there were so many kids my age that played. It wasn’t like I had to play against adults, which is a lot more daunting than going down with a bunch of buddies. And if you lose, now you have a bunch of friends to hang out with, you can watch and chill, versus if you’re playing against adults and you lose, you’re like ‘Al right, what are we going to do now?’ So that atmosphere lent itself to all of us, since we were just getting into beach volleyball. Now, at that age, I think too many people get involved with coaches and stuff like that. I think the number-one thing when I was growing up, and the reason I still love this game, is ‘cause I just played. I remember when I first met Ron Von Hagen, Jim Menges and some of the guys that established the game back in the day, that’s all they did. Now as I’ve gotten older, I don’t necessarily agree with that philosophy for some- one my age, or someone 28, 29, 30. Back then, it was whoever was a good athlete and figured out the game really quick tended to be the best player. Now you’ve got guys breaking down the passing and all of the skills, the setting, how your footwork is, all that kind of stuff. Now I think that, at a higher level as you move forward, you’ve got to break that down a little bit more and really focus on it. But that can get real tedious really fast. If you’re constantly being told and coached on that front, you won’t have as much love for the game, compared to if you’re just going down and playing and truly enjoying it. So that’s what I would recommend to you guys right now.
Cobian: It’s funny, I see that a lot actually, I know some really good indoor players, one of them who just graduated from Ventura (High
School), and they just get burnt out on the game, and they graduate as a senior, and they’re already broken.
Denkensohn: I know someone with the exact same thing. His parents just had him train and train and train. And he doesn’t even want to play anymore. His knees are just giving out.
Rogers: That’s a bummer. Do other stuff
too. That’s one thing that I recognized in myself early, is that I’m a burnout athlete. I burnout in all sports, and I recognized that I could not just play soccer or just play vol- leyball.
Denkensohn: Have you always preferred beach over indoor?
Rogers: After my freshman year, yeah. No doubt about it. I definitely preferred beach after I got my first taste and started enjoy- ing playing on the beach. My skills lent themselves more to the beach game. I was a setter/outside hitter (for indoor). I could pass. I could set. I could hit. I was a pretty good blocker. I served well. So I was good at all the skills. The indoor game, the higher level you get the more you are pigeonholed and specialized into a spot, and I didn’t like
that as much. I like to hit. I love hitting. Cobian: Where do you think the sport of men’s beach volleyball is going? Could you see it ever entering the collegiate level?
Rogers: I would love to see the sport go to the collegiate level. I think that would catapult the sport to the next level. The hard
part is the finances. I’ve been in the college world as a coach, I’ve seen the financial issues that they have, and they’re not getting better. Beach volleyball is fairly cheap, so it’s got that going for it, and you’ve already got the girls there. For me I look at it and say OK, let’s get girls involved now, and get that as a strong sport, and see if you can push your way into it (for the men). And what will happen too is you’ll have clubs. It’ll start off as a huge club, and if it really takes off, and the NCAA sees it as being a profitable sport, somehow or other they’ll make it into an NCAA sport where they can pull money out of it.
Cobian: Who was the most influential coach you came across in your career so far?
Rogers: I don’t have a single one. I have three coaches that have molded me into the player I am today, and in a lot of ways the person I am today. Two of them are in vol- leyball and one in soccer. Jon Lee in volley- ball. He’s a pretty cool guy, but he’s a pretty hard coach. I give him grief all the time and say, ‘Man have you ever been wrong?’ He kicked me out of practice a couple of times because we didn’t always get along or see eye to eye on things, but we figured it out. He pushed me hard, very hard, because I think he saw where I could go and was like: ‘Look, I’m going to push you hard because you can get there.’ In high school my coach in soccer was Abe Jahadhmy. He really shaped me as far as my work ethic and the drills we did for soccer. You run a lot, and you’ve got to be really fit. And also his mental outlook on the game and life. He would take a team up to the mountains and we’d go camping. No soccer, just team bonding. So that was really cool and lent itself to us having really strong soccer teams. And then lastly, Ken Preston at UCSB. He really taught me the organizational type of stuff, and he taught me to break things down from a passing and setting standpoint. I also coached with him from 1999 to 2005, and I saw how organized he was. Every practice was so well thought out and so well planned out, things tended to go like clockwork. That to me was a huge learning experi- ence, and in a lot of ways I feel like that propelled me to the international tour, to be able to take a guy like Phil (Dalhausser), who was pretty raw, and be organized, and say ‘This is our plan, these are our goals, this is what we need to work on.’ And now it’s kind of the same thing with Ryan Doherty.
THE PROFESSOR IS IN: Todd Rogers is known for his all-around ball skills and cerebral approach to the game.
USAVOLLEYBALL.ORG | 35
PHOTOS: PETER BROUILLET
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