Tough schedule pays off as talented Tampa wins AVCA DII beach volleyball title again

Back in the day, the University of Tampa was legendary in sports circles as the premier “outlaw” football program in America, producing such legends as Leon “X-Ray” McQuay, Freddie Solomon, Paul Orndorff (perhaps best known as pro wrestling’s “Mr. Wonderful”) and John Matuszak, an infamous “bad boy” turned actor known as “The Tooz,” who was the first player picked in the 1973 NFL Draft.

The school has also won four NCAA Division II indoor volleyball titles, the last in 2021.

But you certainly can say Tampa is a beach volleyball school after the Spartans won the AVCA Division II Small College Championship again April 16.

It marked the program’s third national title since the program was founded in just 2018. Tampa also won in 2019 (the tourney was canceled in COVID-plagued 2020) and 2021.

A daunting schedule paid dividends this season for the Spartans (21-13), who bounced Colorado Mesa (19-8) 3-0 in the title dual at the spectacular Hickory Point Beach complex in Tavares, Florida.

Also crowned as AVCA Small College champions were Hendrix College (14-15) of Conway, Arkansas, in Division III, and Webber International University (20-5) of Babson Park, Florida, a back-to-back winner in the NAIA division.

After being battle-tested by “name” opponents such as TCU, Florida State, Grand Canyon, Georgia State, Stetson and Florida International, Tampa bounced back from a loss to Concordia-Irvine during pool play in the 14-team competition to edge Palm Beach Atlantic 3-2 in the semis and top the defending champion Mavericks in the final behind victories from its 1s, 3s and 4s pairs.

Coach Jeff Lamm has put lofty goals in front of his teams and has crafted a “destination” competition on Florida’s Gulf Coast for many of the top national programs. The three-day Tampa event in early March featured TCU, Florida State, Grand Canyon, Georgia State, Stetson and Florida Gulf Coast.

“We had one of the top fields of any tournament in the country this year at our place,” Lamm noted. “Next year we have a similar [scenario] when we are hosting three weekends and we have a lot of good teams coming in. My philosophy always has been, for several reasons, to schedule tough.

“We never talk about being Division-II, because in beach volleyball, it doesn’t actually have divisions in the NCAA tournament. Hey, we’re eligible for the NCAAs, so if we can pick up some wins against the right programs and not take any bad losses, we are eligible for an at-large bid. So let’s play all those teams and see what happens.

Before the Small College Championships, “we had played only 7-8 [fellow] D-II teams. When I look at the [national AVCA poll], if the ranking went out to 30, we probably would be somewhere in that 30. We’ve always been kind of right outside the top 20. Every once in a while, we might get a vote with an upset win. We are not far outside of that top 30, if at all.”

That challenging schedule has created built-in recruiting dividends.

“Kids know if they come to Tampa, they are going to play against the best of the best. We are going to schedule as many top teams as we can,” Lamm said. “I love playing those top teams. Every year is a benchmark. Are we getting better, are we closing that gap, or is that gap getting bigger? 

“Not that we are going in saying that, hey, we’re going to beat a Florida State, we’re going to beat a UCLA, or we’re going to beat a USC. But the opportunity to play them, and to see where the gap is, is big for me. It reinforces that what we are doing might be right. Are we training right? Are we recruiting the right way?”

Of the 23 athletes on Tampa’s roster, only five are Floridians. The Spartans’ most fruitful recruiting grounds have been “those pockets of the country where the Division-I teams aren’t hanging out every day, but it’s getting harder and harder to do that,” Lamm noted.

He zeroes in on “kids who are good athletes, but aren’t polished yet, one who  we can train and develop over time. There still are kids who won’t [consider us] because we don’t have that Division-I cachet behind our name. 

“But the girls we do get come here for a reason. The chance to play in that AVCA Division-II championships is awesome. It gives the kids something to play for if we don’t qualify for that NCAA at-large bid.”

The Spartans had two players named to the D-II All-America team, their top pair of Julia Oswald, a 5-foot-11 graduate student from Kentucky, and Payton Brunick, a 5-7 junior from Virginia. Oswald and Brunick dominated their final match against Colorado Mesa’s Holly Schmidt and Macie Lachemann, winning 21-10, 21-12.

“Julia has been the rock of our program year in and year out,” Lamm said, matter-of-factly. “Her freshman year, after our season, I was like, ‘I just hope this kid doesn’t transfer.’ She was a key building block of our program. This kid would have played anywhere, and I mean that. She wouldn’t have been at the 1s at a top-15 program, but she would have been in their top 10 any day of the week.”

On being hailed as “the rock” by her coach, Oswald called it “a huge honor to receive such a compliment from someone whose opinion I value so much. Jeff has been more than just a mentor and coach to me. He has been a father-like figure.”

During five seasons in Tampa that included three D-II titles, which she labeled “nothing short of a dream,” Oswald has gone 70-47. She went 21-12 in 2023, 19-6 when paired with Brunick.

“We put Payton and Julia together early this year and they had this great chemistry,” Lamm said. “Big blocker and a great defender back there. They had one little hiccup in the tournament when they played against [Concordia-Irvine’s Sara Ostojic and Hannah Phair], a very good team.

“Those girls were the first team to cause Payton and Julia to have an out-of-body experience during a match. Concordia just blew them off the court, but [Oswald and Brunick] followed that up with three of the best matches I’ve ever seen either play. In those next three matches, I don’t believe anybody scored 14 of 15 points on them. The girls finished very strong.”

Payton’s twin sister, Madison, helped Tampa pick up another point in the title dual with a sweep at the 4s. Lamm called the Brunick twins “lights-out defenders. They play identical, they look identical.”

Larry Hamel