“We actually met in club soccer, but my sister was playing volleyball, so then, when my mom asked me to try sand volleyball out, I actually asked Gavin to play with me because I knew him from the club,” Caden Phillips explained the story in more detail. “And his brothers played a little bit, so he was like, ‘yeah, sure.’ And this is how we started with sand volleyball. We tried it out, and then, when we got into sand volleyball, we started playing indoor as well. We just never stopped playing volleyball and we got here.”
Not clear why Caden obviously prefers the term “sand volleyball”, but could it have something to do with the fact that there is no beach in Arizona, but of course, there is plenty of sand… Unlike traditional beach volleyball meccas like California, Arizona is not a state widely known for beach volleyball success. So, what's it like to play beach volleyball in Arizona?
“It's fun!” Caden summed it up. “There's a couple of really good guys that will travel out to California sometimes. We practice in Arizona with them. There's like a group of some four people that we train with, and that works really well and helps us prepare for tournaments. We practice out of our school most of the time, Willow Canyon High School. There's a sand court there. And we have a really good coach out there too.”
