- April 8, 2025
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Beach volleyball is a most fitting sport for Florida, but it has yet to catch on how other sports have.
The Florida High School Athletic Association sanctioned the sport ahead of the 2021-22 school year, and it’s taken some time for schools to build up their programs since then.
Riverview High has been a prime example of the potential the sport has in the Sunshine State.
The Rams started their team in the 2021-22 school year. Though they went just 4-8 that season, it hasn’t taken them long to build a burgeoning powerhouse program.
Riverview invested in the sport. The school added sand volleyball courts to its campus ahead of this school year and hired David McFatrich, a former Division-I and pro volleyball coach, to lead their team in 2024.
Following some middling success the past two years, Riverview is having a breakthrough season this year.
The Rams are 6-0 as of April 1 and have won 27 of 30 matches among their five pairings. That has them ranked as the No. 19 team overall in Florida and seventh in Class 3A.
That success is important to the Rams, but the growth of the sport is the paramount focus for McFatrich and his players.
“Some of these girls, if they played year-round, could play beach in college and moms and dads don’t know it,” McFatrich said. “I have to tell them. ‘Well, she loves indoor. Well, I’m just telling you, she could play beach in college or sit on the bench and cheer in indoor.’”
It would be difficult for Riverview to find a better leader for its beach volleyball program than McFatrich.
McFatrich was recently hired to coach the indoor volleyball team at New College for the 2025-26 season following a career coaching the sport at Central Arkansas, Mississippi State and Charleston Southern, along with coaching professionals and Olympians.
Following his most recent stint at Charleston Southern, McFatrich said he moved back to the area to help train some local professional players. Riverview caught wind of McFatrich coming back to the area, and he eventually relented to their requests to also coach the beach volleyball team.
McFatrich said he enjoyed coaching the high school level to an unexpected degree last season, and that’s given him a purpose to give more young women opportunities in the sport.
“There are a lot of players around here who should be focusing on beach volleyball,” he said. “There are 575,000 high school volleyball players in the country. There’s only 4,500 NCAA Division-I indoor players. Beach volleyball has places to grow.”
McFatrich said beach volleyball can be more beneficial than indoor volleyball even without the potential to earn a collegiate scholarship.
Unlike indoor volleyball, beach volleyball players are constantly touching the ball and learning the game since there are just two players on the court at a time.
“You get more touches and you’re more involved in the game rather than maybe the ball is coming to me,” said senior Courtney Parrish, who grew up playing indoor volleyball, but has now played beach volleyball for four years at Riverview.
The setting of beach volleyball — outdoors in sunshine and the sand — naturally makes for a more laid back environment than indoor volleyball, but McFatrich brings a fun element too.
The second-year coach has given each of his players nicknames, such as Cavegirl (Kate Grosso), H-Town (Harper Hayworth), Bro (Brooke Rogers), Crack-a-Lack (Lyla Bailey) and Golden Tongs (Mia Wolfe).
McFatrich has instituted other fun quirks to keep the energy enjoyable.
H-Town awards ‘points’ to players — and takes them away — for arbitrary reasons and players celebrate them as if they’re legitimate.
McFatrich also lightens the mood by having players tell a joke of the day during water breaks at practice and have players talk about how their day went.
“He’s very intentional with all of the players,” sophomore Daisey Troyer said. “He makes a relationship with everybody, so it makes practice and everything more fun.”
That’s not to say that the Rams don’t take the game seriously.
Parrish and Troyer said they’re proud of their team’s undefeated record and are hoping to win their district tournament.
However, that’s not something McFatrich is too concerned about yet.
“I don’t worry about that,” he said of the postseason, which begins with district tournaments on April 21. “I only worry about our side of the net, because to be honest with you, we’re nowhere near as good as we’re gonna be. It might not be this year, but it’s coming.”
