If there is a sport that has the perfect mix between a physically demanding competitiveness and an element of unexpected twists, Pepperdine Beach Volleyball could be up in the rankings.
The athletes have mastered the art of the beautiful sport while building a tight-knit, uplifting family that embodies the values of Pepperdine University. In anticipation for their upcoming season, the team has been in pursuit of the highest level of playing.
Head Coach Marcio Sicoli, senior Madison Oriskovich and sophomore Bella Avelar dive into the core foundation of the team, the tactical logistics of the game and the future of the program.
“Beach Volleyball is a lot more tactical because there’s only two people on the court,” Oriskovich said. “There’s a lot more room open. It’s finding, being an attacker, ways to gain those points but also as a defender, a way to stop those points.”
The Core Foundation of the Team: The Three F’s
Sicoli has 17 years of experience with the Waves under his belt, seven as the head coach of beach volleyball. He has led the team to many accolades, including two American Volleyball Coaches Association National Championship titles and 99 wins, with a .569 winning percentage, according to Pepperdine Athletics.
Hopefully, through his philosophy, he will continue to lead the direction of the program to the uphill trajectory he is fostering in the coming years.
“Our big focus is team culture,” Sicoli said. “What I want is it [to be] family, friendship and faith. You can count on your teammates and your coaching staff for anything that you need. The bigger umbrella is our faith in Jesus Christ.”
Furthermore, besides developing a Christ-centered culture, Sicoli said he is also intentional with how he runs practice so the athletes can be ready for any competition.
“Most of the practice are playing time and throughout the playing time, we’re trying to solve problems,” Sicoli said. “When the opponent give us a problem, we can solve that really fast.”
Offering the perspectives of two of the athletes on the Beach Volleyball team, Oriskovich and Avelar express the impact Sicoli’s philosophy has had in their own personal experiences with the team so far.
“Marcio keeps a really small team,” Oriskovich said. “We’re a very tight unit, makes them more kind of a well-oiled machine. He really instills in us a sense of grit to promote a go-get-it mindset versus a victimized mindset.”
Oriskovich has accumulated a distinguished record as a student-athlete during her four years at Pepperdine. Her recent awards include making the West Coast Conference (WCC) First Team 2024 and WCC All-American Academic ‘Honorable Mention’ 2024, just to name a few.
Avelar, a recent sophomore transfer coming from Stetson University, will debut as a Pepperdine athlete this season.
“I love my team, I love the coaches,” Avelar said. “Our team is really a family. Say that I’m playing on the court — it’s not about me. If I win a game, I’m not winning for myself. I’m winning for the team and the program.”
As for the tactical approach to how they build the individual skills, it is all incorporated in their daily training regime.
Avelar said that three out of the five days are physically intense days, and there is a lot of conditioning work. The other two days consist of practices that reflect game time by playing against different teams of pairs.
Additionally, a section of practice is dedicated to technical skills called clinic, where players will focus on more tedious things like serving on either direction, calling for sets and running specific plays that happen in a real-time game, she said.
As much as practice can help the athletes anticipate their competition and how to take advantage of the outside elements, the sport is filled with twists that require quick decisive thinking and expecting the unexpected.
The Inner Workings of the Game: Playing with the Elements
Beach volleyball, in itself, is the sport of volleyball, whether taking place indoors or outdoors. Likewise, there’s many similarities that can be shared with playing indoor volleyball. Yet, the differences are stark as the athletes must factor in the unpredictable environment.
When delving into the means of playing through the different weather conditions, Oriskovich outlines how it affects their ability to hit the ball.
“For wind, usually [you want] to keep the ball a little closer to each other and a little lower and to run quicker plays so the other team doesn’t have a lot of time to react,” Oriskovich said.
In the rain, the ball gets really heavy, so serving and hitting aggressively with big powerful movements to have the ball drop either on the side or in front of the opponents is key, she said.
But Oriskovich said it’s all part of the fun in competing in the sport — it’s keeping a positive mindset and not letting the weather control your game.
“Like as Marcio would say, the uncontrollable control your game,” Oriskovich said. “So, control the ball and the movement of the game, but you can’t control how windy it is and just make the most of it.”
For Sicoli, as a coach, he plays a role by looking from the outside to help the players adjust to the intense competition.
“We do coaching and giving them the awareness of the environment, of the opponent on a time manner that they can make those decisions quickly,” Sicoli said.
A very crucial part he plays as the coach is matching the right players up together as pairs to guarantee the best success on the court that showcases each athletes’ individuality while complementing their skills together.
“First thing is the skill and the specialization — what they do with the volleyball,” Sicoli said. “The second thing is the chemistry with your partner that you know most of the time wins games.”
Avelar said serving is one of the main aspects of a play that determines the outcome.
“Serve is the most important — the whole point is to get the other team out of system in order to score the point off of the serve,” Avelar said.
The game in itself has a layer of complexity due to playing outdoors that the players need to adapt to, yet all still share the same love for the sport of volleyball.
Pepperdine Beach Volleyball: The Challenges and the Future
Pepperdine’s Beach Volleyball program, like many of the other athletic programs here at Pepperdine, has high expectations and challenges that both the coaches and players face. They strive to balance reflecting the institutional values while also playing at a Division I level.
Specifically, for the coaching staff, a challenge is the recruiting process.
“The college sports landscape is changing around the country,” Sicoli said. “It has been hard to keep up with these quick changes in terms of financial portion [and the] NCAA legislation.”
He said they lost a couple key players that felt like they didn’t fit with Pepperdine, with its small size and big faith. As the values of college sports have been evolving, he’s proud that Pepperdine didn’t change their values.
With it though comes the loss of the competitive ranking of the program, the financial level and the facilities.
However, one thing constant in the team’s pursuit for the game is winning a national championship title.
“Our biggest team goal this year is to win WCC’s,” Oriskovich said. “We were two points away from winning last year, and it was hard to go through that and just to lose it.”
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Contact Christine Park via email: christine.park@pepperdine.edu
