B EACH VOLLEYB ALL
bronze medalists April Ross and Kerri Walsh Jennings. Not a bad debut effort.
SWEAT SAYS THE ONE WORD THAT best describes her game is “passion.” That, and the freshness of a new partnership has brought her back to her roots. “I am playing for the enjoyment again,” she says. There’s also new coach, Ty Tramblie, a long-
time AVP player whose energy and effort has wowed fans and impressed fellow competitors for a decade. “He’s such a great defensive player that he’s
obviously helping me,” Sweat says. “But he also has an indoor coaching background and has helped Summer technically with her blocking.” Tramblie says Sweat is only a better
version of himself, perhaps with tidier hair. “My favorite part of Brooke’s game is how tenacious she is,” says Tramblie, who is only a few inches taller than the 5-8 Sweat. “She is completely relentless and willing to run through a wall for a ball. She wants to be the best in the world and that infectious quality rubs off on everyone.” Tramblie says effort will never be a
problem for his new team. “When I am around Brooke, I only want to do my absolute best because that is all she accepts.” “Old school” can be an overused term with a definition that is difficult to pinpoint. But if it means trying hard with a simple love of the game, then it applies to Sweat. She can be sandwiched by blood and tears and still be compet- ing hard. Casey Patterson, who was on the
same trek as Sweat the last four years to become a first-time Olympian, also takes inspiration in her style. “She is so fun to watch,” he says. “She never gives up on a point and plays through the whistle. That’s why young play- ers should look at her game. She is so patient and smooth on defense. She breaks at the right time and then is so determined to get the ball up.”
SWEAT’S PRIMARY RESIDENCE IS still in Florida, but she spends about 75 percent of the year training in Califor- nia. She has been doing that for more than five years, a commitment that keeps her apart from her husband, Nick, for long stretches. Sweat started the routine before she had any signifi- cant status on either the AVP or FIVB tours. When she first started the process, she stayed
in every hotel within a five-mile radius of the Los Angeles airport, which may have qualified for reviewing continental breakfasts for The Food Channel but didn’t make things comfort-
44 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at
usavolleyball.org/mag
Brooke Sweat has a reputation for working as hard as any player on the fundamentals. (Photo: Don Liebig)
and he and his twin brother played a lot of beach volleyball,” she says. “Before I started dating him, I didn’t play beach volleyball, didn’t have any interest in it whatsoever. I started dating him and got out on the beach a lot and started trying to play and got hooked.” Nick travels with Brooke to most of the tournaments, but it’s a major sacrifice for both of them that Brooke resides in California for so much of the year to keep her career on path.
able. “I had to believe in myself and have faith I could achieve my goal,” she says. “I moved to California four and a half years ago not know- ing what was going on, and I worked my butt off to try to get partners, worked my way up through USA Volleyball. Nothing was handed to me. No wildcards, no nothing. I really had to grind it out.” It was Nick who introduced her to the game.
Sweat was a live-armed, all-around indoor player at Florida Gulf Coast University who racked up more than 1,000 kills in her college career, but she didn’t start playing in the sand until she met her future husband. “While I was in college I was dating Nick,
Every top player feels the need to be in Hermosa Beach or Manhattan Beach to train, but few take it to the extreme of the Sweats. Brooke understands that her life won’t always be like this. Ultimately, she plans to return to Florida full time to her husband and family, but that will be after she makes her last professional dig. At 31, she is waiting to start a family until she’s finished with the pro game.
SWEAT SAYS SHE’LL REMEMBER HER journey with Fendrick as a positive. “We ended on good terms,” she says. “We won our last tournament together (AVP Open in Chicago last September), so you can’t do any better than that.”
The shoulder injury, however, de- railed the duo’s full potential. She first injured it diving for a ball in practice in June of 2015, and she knew she was really hurt.
“I had taken a cortisone shot for a minor shoulder issue unrelated to the rotator cuff,” she says. “When I landed, I could feel the pain and I knew I had really hurt myself.” Surgery was going to be costly in terms of the number of tournaments Sweat and Fendrick would have to miss in the middle of the qualifying process. She saw three doctors, and two of them recommended a complete repair, but that would have jeopardized her chances to qualify. The third doctor suggested arthroscopic surgery to get her through the Olympic year. That’s the option she chose, deciding she could adjust her offense, which was never based solely on power anyway. It was tough. With a healthy shoul-
der, she’d always been able to keep blockers honest and make them hold at the net, even though she wasn’t a big bomber. But without adequate heat, she had more trouble scoring in transition, and that put a premium on setting Fendrick on two. “From the first day I teamed up with
Lauren, our focus was to qualify for the Olympics and it was all business,” she says. “That’s the way it should be, but it was stressful and throwing an injury in there added extra stress.” With time, she feels she’ll have an
even greater appreciation for representing the U.S. in the Olympics. “The journey is just so long and so tough, and at points during the journey there are injuries and partner switches and all of that,” she says. “It’s so tough to go through it all, and then you make it and your dreams are shot once you get there. It’s hard to qualify for the Olympics. Misty (May-Treanor) and Kerri (Walsh Jennings) made it look easy; I have so much respect for them because it’s not
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