White Sands Beach Sports and Activities Facility brings indoor beach volleyball to Hillsboro

Oregonian - White Sands volleyball 181.JPGView full sizeOwner Brian Chapman brought in 10 truckloads of sand from Florence for his White Sands Beach Sports and Activities Facility. He opened the indoor beach volleyball court near Hillsboro Airport in October.

HILLSBORO -- Roman Onishchenko sets the ball at the net and Matt Leichty  bursts out of the sand for a perfect spike.

The barefoot Portland-area beach volleyball players, clad in shorts and sleeveless shirts and dusted with fine grains of sand, easily dispatch a team from Seattle during a small tournament held on a day that rain wraps the region like a wet blanket.

Wait a minute: Beach volleyball, in November? And in Hillsboro, some 60 miles from the nearest ocean beach?

Brian Chapman, a former professional volleyball player, brought the beach indoors when he opened the

last month in the back of a light-industrial business complex next to the Hillsboro Airport.

The business is barely noticeable from the outside, save for a small sign on Northeast 25th Avenue, but it didn't take volleyball players from across the Pacific Northwest long to discover what Chapman said is the largest heated, indoor volleyball court on the West Coast.

"There's a lot of good athletes here who don't need to travel to California in the winter to train. I think it will really take off," said Marija Vojnovic,  who played volleyball for Portland State University until last season and hopes to qualify to play beach volleyball in the Olympics for her native Serbia.

Vojnovic, 23, said that even training in the winter in California has its drawbacks, because players often have to wear sweatsuits until they warm up. At White Sands, they can wear traditional bikinis throughout training and tournaments.

"All of the girls I've been talking to are very excited," said Vojnovic, who is volunteering time at White Sands while the business gets its footing.

Bringing the beach to Hillsboro wasn't easy. To cover his four courts -- nearly 6,000 square feet -- with 6 inches of sand, Chapman dug deep into his savings to pay for 10 truckloads of fine white sand from Florence. (Closer sand supplies are too dusty, Chapman said.)

Chapman didn't want to say how much the sand cost, but he acknowledged the trucking fees alone ran into the thousands of dollars. Fortunately for him, he expects this sand to last 10 years before he needs to replenish the supply.

With the cost of the sand, his lease payment and the big energy bills necessary to operate an indoor beach, Chapman said it could take four or five years for White Sands Beach to break even. But Chapman -- a 39-year-old player, coach and league and tournament organizer who fell for volleyball in college -- said he didn't build it as a profit machine.

"I'm kind of doing it for the love of the sport," he said.

League volleyball players pay $175 to $375 per season, depending on the type of league. Tournaments that attract semi-professional players cost $60 per two-person team. "King of the Beach" tournaments, aimed at recreational-level players, are $25 per person. White Sands also takes down the nets each week to host indoor soccer.

Chapman said beach volleyball is growing "behind a huge groundswell across the country," spurred in large part by its popularity during the Summer Olympics, where champions such as Kerri Walsh  and Misty May  become super-stars.

Chapman also runs youth clubs for Oregon teens and works with

to put on a summer beach volleyball tournament in Seaside, which Chapman said is the largest amateur tourney in the world. "Their numbers (of participants) are going through the roof the last three years," he said.

More colleges are adding teams, and traditional team volleyball players at the high-school level often play on the sand to keep sharp during the off-season. "Playing beach volleyball allows you to practice all of your skills," because the teams have just two or four players to cover a full court, Chapman said. "The workout in the sand is incredible."

Chapman, a baseball player at

discovered beach volleyball when he went to

and continued his interest at

.

A few years later, he moved to Southern California to test his skills on the outdoor circuit, playing professionally on and off for four years. He retired from competitive play a couple of months ago to open White Sands Beach.

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