FORT COLLINS — The day wasn’t ideal for the transition, but Tom Hilbert wanted to start it anyway.
So halfway through Wednesday’s practice, the final week of spring drills for Hilbert’s Colorado State volleyball team, he had them head outdoors and into the wind to the sand courts just south of the student rec center. The Rams spent a good portion of the rest of the week there, culminating with a mini-tournament on Saturday with the help of the men’s club team on campus.
It’s also been made an expectation the players will spend part of the summer playing in doubles sand tournaments, as Hilbert believes it will make them a better team inside come the fall.
“The main purpose is to get them to be introduced and like it so it will encourage them to go play in the summer,” Hilbert said. “It’s good for them. It’s good for them volleyball wise, it’s good for them competitively, and playing on the sand, I think, increases your jump. Last fall when we came in, the person who had most physically improved was Dri (Culbert), and she had played the most on the sand.”
Setter Deedra Foss played a bit, teaming up with former teammate Sam Peters. Both of them had excellent seasons — Foss the setter of the year, Peters the player of the year in the Mountain West — and Foss said she could see the sand game translate on the court.
“It really makes us work on our defense and different moves we can incorporate indoors,” she said. “Out on the sand, somebody did an open-hand up, and Tom was like, ‘that’s a move you can do indoors.’ It really just helps us all around as players, not just one specific position.
“I think it helped us read the ball and see the ball better. If you look at our statistics, our defense was a lot better than it had been.”
For the first time, the Rams have a mandatory June report date, and Hilbert wants them outside playing. Last year, the players had set teams, but this time around, Hilbert is looking for them to rotate around and play as much as they can.
He feels there are more benefits than just an increased vertical leap. Playing doubles in the sand requires each player to handle the ball, and there are a lot of one-hand shots, which middles already use in the indoor game. The biggest bonus of all, he said, could come in how they move.
“Point scoring in doubles is hard to come by, so you really have to do something extraordinary to score a serving point,” he said. “That, in and of itself, is a good lesson. Efficiency of movement is the other thing. It forces you to read and go directly to something. You can’t have negative steps and that kind of stuff.”
The truth is, for some of them it will seem like a new game. Still, Kelsey Snider said if it can make her better in the fall, it’s more than worth the effort.
“I think, especially during the summer, he wants us to play doubles, get outside and work on our skills,” she said. “That will be a good way to help us. With anything new, you’re going to feel silly at first, but it will be fun. But also, you want to get better.”
Contact Sports Editor Mike Brohard at 970-635-3633 or mbrohard@reporter-herald.com and at twitter.com/mbrohard