St. Johns Volleyball Club (SJVC) has announced the launch of its 2026-27 Academy Travel Team, what the club believes to be Northern Florida’s first elite volleyball academy to train athletes year-round in both indoor and beach volleyball under a single program.
The team is designed for committed, high-ceiling players and is open to families willing to travel from across the region to be part of it.
Unlike traditional clubs that run an indoor season and then go dark, the SJVC Academy keeps athletes developing through all four seasons. The program pairs three-hour indoor practices and specialized weight-room training with dedicated beach sessions at the Nocatee Beach Courts, then shifts to focused morning training during the high school beach season.
The result is a continuous, college-style development model at a time when universities increasingly recruit athletes who can play both disciplines.
“Colleges are recruiting indoor and beach players — and the best athletes are learning both,” said Andor Gyulai, SJVC head coach and co-founder. “We built this academy so a girl in Northeast Florida doesn’t have to choose, and doesn’t have to leave the region to get elite, year-round coaching. We already have families driving an hour or more because there’s nothing else like it up here.”
The academy is located at SJVC’s new 18,000-square-foot facility at 6940 U.S. 1 in St. Augustine and opened in June 2026. The facility features dedicated indoor courts, a specialized volleyball weight room and a training environment purpose-built around the club’s coaching systems, giving academy athletes a true home base rather than rented gym time.
The program is led by Gyulai, a coach with 33 years and more than 50,000 hours of youth coaching experience. Widely known online as a “celebrity volleyball coach,” his instructional passing and spiking videos have drawn more than 5-million views on YouTube. A UCLA-trained player and the first South African to play NCAA collegiate volleyball in the United States, Gyulai founded Volleyball1on1.com in 2009; it’s one of the first online volleyball coaching platforms, now home to a library of more than 2,500 training videos used by coaches and athletes worldwide.
The academy’s development model isn’t theoretical; it’s the same system employed by Gyulai’s own children.
His daughter, Veda Gyulai, will be a founding member of the 2026–27 academy roster. This past season she led her school, PIA, to the St. Johns County middle school championship and finished as the top player across all St. Johns County schools in both kills and total points.
His son, Thor Gyulai, a 2026 graduate of Ponte Vedra High School who came up through the SJVC beach program, takes the next step this summer: at just 18, he competes on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour in Europe, facing some of the best adult players in the world.
For academy families, the message is simple: the coaching, culture and systems that developed Thor and Veda are exactly what their athletes will train in every week.
SJVC’s coaching is built on proprietary systems including “It’s Bigger Than Volleyball” and “What Great Looks Like!,” documented in a 350-page coaching manual that keeps instruction consistent across every practice. Beyond on-court skills, the academy weaves in life-skills development — goal-setting, communication, critical thinking and performing under pressure.
“We develop curious, communicative, grateful, goal-setting, self-directed, critical-thinking lifelong learners who thrive in competition and under pressure,” Gyulai said. “That’s what an academy should be.”
The 2026–27 SJVC Academy season runs from mid-November 2026 through mid-June 2027. Roster spots are limited. Families across Northeast Florida and South Georgia — including the greater Jacksonville area, Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, Fruit Cove, Clay County, Palm Coast and beyond — are invited to inquire about tryouts and availability.
To learn more or schedule an evaluation, contact Gyulai at andor@volleyball1on1.com or 310-435-5840.
