Crown Cove Aquatic Center—Southwestern’s “best kept secret”—has an offer no volleyball player can refuse, lessons on the beach with Olympic legend Angela Rock. It is kind of like a guitarist jamming with Hendrix, a painter sharing a canvas with Monet, or a writer doing a workshop with Shakespeare.
Even so, there has not exactly been a stampede of SWC students overrunning the magnificent sands of the Silver Strand beach, but Rock, unlike most type-A athletes, is willing to be patient.
“For me it’s a challenge to get Southwestern students to come down here,” she said. “I made this class in the afternoon hoping to catch some high school students that got out of class to not make it a conflict with their core classes. It’s a little bit of a drive, but I feel like its such an extreme value to get someone like myself to teach them for the cost of one unit, its ridiculous, compared to what private lessons cost with me, it’s such a great value.”
Rock is one of America’s most celebrated and decorated volleyball players of all time. She is an Olympian as a player and a coach, Team U.S.A.’s most valuable player in 1985 and a member of the SDSU Hall of Fame. She is also the holder of two master’s degrees, a former San Diego firefighter and mentor to Olympians-on-the-rise. She earned her bachelor’s in psychology from SDSU, master’s in physical education from Azusa Pacific and another master’s in education from National University.
Rock coached the U.S. beach volleyball team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the inaugural year of the sport. She is currently coaching two top professional athletes, Matt Bosse and Matt Olson, in sand volleyball.
Rock has chosen the relative obscurity of SWC over other career options.
“For me it’s a great opportunity to both coach indoor, teach and have a sand class,” she said. “It’s a beautiful combination of all the things I want to do.”
Sand volleyball is very similar to indoor volleyball. Sand courts are 16 x 8 meters, compared to indoor wooden courts of 18 x 9 meters. Sand volleyball can be played with two players on each team.
Though the sand volleyball class is small and stocked mostly by retirees, her students insist the secret will soon get out that you can get expensive college units playing volleyball on one of America’s best beaches with an Olympic legend.
Tom Logan, 64, and Linda Logan, 63, are in their fourth semester of sand volleyball with Rock.
“You get a coach like Angela Rock and she’s one of the best volleyball players ever,” said Tom Logan. “For that kind of coaching, for the price, you just can’t beat it.” Brenda Silva, 23, mathematics, said she is new to sand volleyball. She joined the beach front sport to fulfill graduation requirements and avoid the hustle of main campus.
“I like it a lot, it’s very different, it’s very new,” said Silva. “If I played this game before it would be harder to break the habits I would have already had.”
Silva said Rock is a great coach with great experience.
“She gives you a lot of feedback, she’s not just standing there and watching the game and later on giving you critique,” said Silva. “She’s critiquing you as you go and she’s constantly doing it and reminding you. I like that, so you don’t forget. She’s always giving you something to work with.”
Besides the sand volleyball class, Rock teaches beginners and advanced indoor volleyball, weight lifting, golf, fitness and coaches the women’s intercollegiate volleyball team.
She retired from professional volleyball in 2001, but draws on the experience to teach others.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “How can you top seeing the world and playing volleyball? I was lucky enough to play indoor and see the world. Then I saw a bunch of different beaches playing on the sand and so I played volleyball for a living for 19 years, 14 on the beach, five indoor. What you can hope for is to get that same kind of feeling, inspiration and highs and lows of competition from coaching.”
