Club volleyball has become an incredibly hard sport to join. It costs an exceptional amount of money and takes many hours of commitment. A solution to this problem was the creation of M2’s Volleyball Academy. Head director Scott Beauchamp created the volleyball program to allow athletes of all levels to enjoy the fun of volleyball without worrying about cost and time.

M2’s Academy was already a program added to the Marin Juniors Club, a travel volleyball club with 3 teams for each age group. When Beauchamp realized the program’s potential, he was.      coaching the Marin Juniors 13 and 14 club teams and Saint Hilary’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) team when he was recruited to take over the program. Beauchamp wanted to expand the program to make M2’s Academy not just fifth-eighth grade, but also selective teams that travel to play in tournaments.

 “The M2’s Academy program gives [players] a little bit of a taste of the club volleyball program without that huge commitment and expense,” Beauchamp said. 

Beauchamp saw many possibilities and wanted to see this program grow and expand. He also noticed that parents and players were becoming frustrated with the lack of coaches and organization, which resulted in Beauchamp taking the job. The hardest part of increasing the program’s potential was finding coaches. Beauchamp then found existing retired club players to coach the teams. 

“What the coaches are finding out is that they have so much to give back to these younger players because they love volleyball so much. [The coaches] want these younger players to love the sport as much as they do,” Beauchamp said. 

M2’s Academy has even started attending travel tournaments in Sacramento as part of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the national volleyball league. The tournaments are a lot smaller but still competitive, as teams from all over Northern California, Nevada, and Arizona come to play.

This year, M2’s Volleyball Academy has expanded its program to create M2 Plus. This part of the program focuses on selective teams for high school students that want to continue playing for M2. The M2 Plus program is partly run by another coach, Loren Anderson, who moved to Marin from Idaho where he previously ran his own volleyball club in Boise for 14 years. 

“I love volleyball. I’ve been playing it for 32 years, and I feel like anybody who loves the game and wants to play should be able to be given an opportunity to play,” Anderson said.

Anderson was also recently hired as the new Redwood girls’ varsity volleyball coach for the fall season of 2023. 

“I love the game itself, and I love sharing the game with other people. I get a good feeling inside [when] helping other people achieve their goals,” Anderson said.

Sophomore Kaitlyn Widman is a player on one of the M2 Plus selective teams and is a current Redwood student. She’s been playing volleyball since fifth grade and has been pursuing her love for the sport through the CYO. This year, she decided to try out for the M2 Plus selective team, coached by Anderson. 

“The big difference about my past volleyball experiences vs. M2 Plus is that M2 Plus created the effort that the coaches put in to improve our skills,” Widman said.

One reason that players for M2, such as Widman, chose the program is that other club Volleyball teams’ heavy commitment and advancing difficulty make it very competitive. Due to the recreational nature of M2, the pressure of continuing with the sport as players get older is not as intense, and it can still be enjoyed.

“If you’re not committing to a position and competing at that high level early on, it is a lot harder to go to the next level and that’s why the sport can be so intense,” Beauchamp said. 

Club teams require tons of tournaments which can cause students to fall behind on their schoolwork. The pressure is additionally heightened because only six player

s are needed on the court so coaches are looking for specific skill types when building a team. M2’s academy and M2 Plus allow players time to enjoy other commitments yet still compete and enjoy the fun of volleyball.

“[The players are] passionate, and they’re committed to the program, and that’s the most important part of being involved with a sport,” Beauchamp said.