When Andor Gyulai and Vanessa Summers-Gyulai first moved to the Ponte Vedra area about three years ago they felt like it was a great community to develop beach volleyball players and even Olympians.
So, they got right to work trying to make that happen and three years later, multiple beach volleyball courts are about to be opened on June 1 as part of the Nocatee community.
“When we arrived here, we knew there were some resources needed and one of them was beach volleyball, because it’s so far for the kids to go to Jax Beach from here,” Gyulai said. “So, I approached the county and made the proposition to them that there are some really great things with beach volleyball in the country, because it’s now in every single high school in the area and it’s the fastest growing sport in NCAA history.”
Gyulai’s expectations for the area are high and he has lofty goals that know with these designated beach volleyball courts located at 707 Little River Road in Ponte Vedra, all those goals are now within reach.
“We came here to raise some beach volleyball Olympians and what’s so exciting is that know we have this avenue to do it,” Gyulai said. “We think this is an incredible location where we can tap into the Nocatee community and really build something special here.”
It will start with some camps this summer for high school and elite middle school players with parents able to learn more about the opportunities at www.stjohnsbeachvolleyball.com.
According to Summers-Gyulai, some of the best beach volleyball players in the world are shorter, which shows that you don’t need to be extremely tall to be successful at the top level in beach volleyball as opposed to maybe the indoor side of things.
“It’s been well established that you don’t have to have crazy height in order to really have a huge trajectory if you choose the sport, which is exciting,” Summers-Gyulai said. “I tell the moms we work with that what’s happening for volleyball for girls has never happened before and the level of popularity is so extreme, and it only continues to grow. Here at St. Johns Beach Volleyball, we’re super passionate about the sport but one of our trademarks is that it’s bigger than volleyball because we’re teaching them life skills to thrive no matter what they choose to do.”
Gyulai has more than 32 years and 50,000-plus hours developing elite volleyball players and has created more than 2,500 instructional videos with some of the sport’s greatest players and coaches, and he cannot wait to continue to pass that on to the local community more than he already does as the head coach of the Ponte Vedra High boys volleyball varsity team where his son Thor plays.
“Just think about how special it’s going to be come those Florida summer evenings with the lights on here (at the beach courts), there’s just something special about that,” Gyulai said.
