Thacher Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023

Hitting the Beach

Thacher’s newest CIF sport celebrates its inaugural season

Known mostly for the mountain views and citrus bloom aromas, Thacher’s campus can now also be known for its beach—beach volleyball that is.

Thacher added outdoor sand volleyball courts back in 2020, in part to augment outdoor activity options during the days of on-campus covid mitigation efforts. Since then, however, student and coach enthusiasm for the sport has grown, propelling it to become an official spring afternoon offering along with lacrosse, boys’ baseball, track & field, and boys’ tennis (girls’ tennis is played in the fall).

Girls' beach volleyball (although sand and beach volleyball are interchangeable in sport, the California Interscholastic Federation—the state’s governing body for high school sports—designates it as beach volleyball) is the first addition of an interscholastic team in twenty years at Thacher.

Coach Sayra Trejo (Fisher Fellow in the Language Department and indoor varsity girls' volleyball coach) joined Thacher with experience as a player, announcer, and coach and jumped at the chance to helm the squad. She is excited to be building the program with an enthusiastic group of student athletes.

Trejo’s approach to coaching, both indoor and on sand, begins by fostering a love of the game, healthy competition, and celebrating each other’s successes.

“This season was all about experience," said Coach Trejo. "Knowing how much harder this game is to move around in the sand....the team embraced the challenge and pushed themselves to improve everyday."

With help from Grace Yang CdeP 2023 and Petra Stoilkovich CdeP 2023, both of whom played competitive beach volleyball last year, the team and sport are off to a strong start and the players look forward to taking to the sand next spring with a season of experience under their belts.