FORT WORTH, Texas — You will not find a beach anywhere near North Texas. Yet, that has not stopped TCU from putting together one of the top beach volleyball teams in the country.
On Wednesday, the team won their first ever NCAA tournament match and head into the weekend as one of the “Elite 8” teams left vying for an NCAA national title. A 39-3 record – good enough to secure the No. 2 overall seed in the tournament – is already quite the accomplishment for a program that just started in 2015.
“At first, we would go to Hawaii or UCLA or USC and get smashed,” said senior Caroline White. “But over the years, we have gotten closer and closer and this year we are going to take it all.”
Building a contender is the job of head coach Hector Gutierrez, and he has looked both near and far to bring the best volleyball players to Fort Worth. Coming from a national championship-winning program at Florida State where he served as assistant coach, Gutierrez knew what it took to build a winner.
“I wanted to combine the talent from Texas and talent from overseas and that is how we got competitive right away,” said Gutierrez.
Recruiting the best beach volleyball players to a relatively new program deep in the heart of Texas was not nearly as hard as it may seem. Gutierrez said the support of the athletic department and everything else the Fort Worth/TCU community has to offer is the ultimate recruiting tool.
“At the end of the day, you can play this sport anywhere. You just need sand and a net,” he said. “You can put a good team together if you have the support of the school and have players believing in the coaches’ message.”
The team is a healthy mix of players from around the state, country and even the world. In addition to the nine Texans of the team, there are multiple Californians, Floridians, and Arizonians.
“We are like a motely crew,” said senior Kaylie McHugh, a Florida native. “The first thing (Gutierrez) asked us is ‘do you want to win a national championship,’ and of course, that is a ‘yes.'”
There are also four players from Gutierrez’s native country of Spain, including Tania Moreno, who has played the sport since the age of 4 growing up in Madrid.
“My first impression of Texas was the boots and hats and horses, like in the movies basically” said Moreno. “But it is cool to have these facilities on campus and this team is just amazing.”
But Gutierrez said selling players overseas on the chance to move across the world and attend college at TCU is the easy part.
“For the Spanish girls, it is an easy sell because we do not have this in Spain. The biggest selling point we can offer them is for the experience and their future after they are done playing with us.”
TCU will play Georgia State at 11 a.m. on Friday in the double-elimination “Elite 8” round of the NCAA tournament.