Katie Spieler is the nicest person you’ll ever meet.
In four years of knowing her, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her gossip or say anything mean. She’s also an extremely hard worker. She’s only 5’5” which would deter most people from striving for a professional beach volleyball career among 6’3” giants (like myself). But Katie can crush the ball to the deep corner, cut it precisely onto the line, and drop the sickest little pokey right over the net that topples those giants right over in the sand as they lay out to get a hand on it (giants like me, of course).
Katie also was dating Eric Zaun when he passed away last June. Losing one of our own was a devastating blow to the AVP family. I can’t even imagine how Katie got through it. Grief is an everyday battle; it comes in waves. At first, they drown you. You’re trapped underneath and don’t know when your first full breath will come. But then your head breaks the water and you gulp cold, sweet air. The waves still come, still strong, some still pull you under. Soon they lessen, some are weaker, some unexpectedly heavy. The waves don’t stop, but eventually, you learn how to swim better.
One way Katie learned to navigate her torrents of grief was by throwing her focus into her AVP America club. She’s co-founder of East Beach Volleyball Academy in Santa Barbara and a tournament director of AVP America youth tournaments up there. She’s been working with AVPFirst since their first year in 2016, so she’s had a front-row seat to the rapid expansion of AVP’s youth impact from the beginning. Her passion for coaching and growing the game are infectious and they power her through both the good and bad times. Check out her stories from the sand as a player, a spectator, and a coach, and how AVP America’s Carly Gant helped her through some of the deepest waters of last season.
Katie Spieler
I was sitting on the sand watching the sunset over Lake Michigan. Hours before, I had gone 0-2 barbeque in the 2019 AVP Chicago and felt like my world was crashing down. I’m sure most athletes can relate to this feeling after a tough loss. But these days, the feeling was twofold — once the whistle sounded for the last time, the reality of Eric’s loss came flooding back. Forty minutes of volleyball had just distracted my mind, damming up a waterfall of sadness, only for it all to hit at once.
But this isn’t a story about me; it’s about the woman who was sitting next to me on the beach that night. She alleviated my darkness by being by my side — crying, laughing, talking about life, love, and loss. She had been my angel at every event I played after losing Eric last season. The moment my game ended, I’d run over to her AVP America tent before that darkness hit me. I spent all my downtime in between matches beside her — listening, talking, just being. She was my safe haven and one of the main reasons I was able to keep going. Her name is Carly Gant.
If you don’t know Carly and her husband Wayne, you should. Last season, they traveled across the country with their three kids (who quickly became my best friends) to make sure there was an AVP America tent at almost every pro, junior, and grassroots tournament. They started Great American Volleyball in 2002, hosting about 4,000 teams per summer, which is the largest tour aside from CBVA in the country.
In 2012, they started Volley America with Rich Heiles at East End Volleyball in Long Beach, NY. When asked how the collaboration with AVP came about, Carly Gant said, “I wrote an email to Donald Sun asking to meet and said, ‘I believe we can work together to unify our sport.’ Donald was so welcoming and willing to hear what we had to say. We knew that beach volleyball lacked unity. There was a pro tour with no supporting amateur pipeline. There was junior sanctioning but with no adult divisions through other entities. The AVP was a natural fit.” And so AVP America was born, successfully unifying a sport that has been constantly plagued with fragmentation.
From an outside perspective, this was the smartest move the AVP could have made. The golden question is – how do we make our sport financially stable? How do we recreate the early days – with 26 events a year and prize money flowing? Carly and Wayne have highlighted what I believe is the most unique aspect of our sport: the community. AVP America has created a unity among volleyball individuals across the country by capturing momentum with the already established values of the beach volleyball community.
Prior to this collaboration, AVP was dominating in the pro and youth markets. But what about all those weekend warriors? The players that become the fans? We need more of these people. To capitalize on the feeling you events like Seaside and Waupaca generate, when the 1600 teams that are no longer in the tournament become the rowdiest, courtside fans of the finals and make the atmosphere electric. These events unify all beach volleyball athletes — the kids, adults, and pros.
In case you’ve not been to an event like Seaside or Waupaca, let me attempt to give you a visual. There is a division for ALL. In 2019, there were 35 divisions at Waupaca and over a hundred teams signed up for the Men’s Quads BB division. Seaside had over 65 divisions with over 1600 teams competing. The kids playing are inspired by watching the pros; the parents that brought those kids get to play instead of sitting on the sidelines; the young adult volleyball enthusiasts get to play next to elite pros and get rowdy, and the pros get treated like they are celebrities. It is a win-win-win.
The Gants go one step further to generate more momentum with the effort that they put in to make every single person feel cared for – a crucial aspect of creating success in an organization, and one that is often overlooked. From the beginning, a primary focus of the Gant’s has been to treat each player, regardless of their division, equally. Starting with Great American Volleyball (GAV), Carly explained how every division is “playing on high-grade pro-net systems and offering quality prizes for everyone. This model seems to work because GAV is hosting 35-40 court events every weekend in New Jersey.” Once you’ve captured momentum, this is how you build upon it. Every person becomes a lifetime player and fan, and that momentum keeps snowballing.
As an AVP professional athlete, I have so much faith in my tour because of Carly and Wayne Gant’s work through AVP America. On a smaller scale with my own beach volleyball club, I see how the key to your organization is building a strong base of followers that will create the foundation for the rest of your organization to thrive. The foundation of our pro AVP tour is built on the all-encompassing organization that is AVP America. Carly and Wayne have hand-built this foundation by committing their precious time to personally being there to show any tournament, athlete, and organization that AVP America is there to support them and help them be successful. It’s just like their tent that was always there for me to run to last season – they are there, they are all in, and they are unifying our sport in a way that has never been done before.