Beach volleyball’s Brook Bauer: “If you don’t dream big, what’s the point?”

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Brooke Niles told her not to do it. It wasn’t the time to take on the corporate life, to leave all of her talent on the beach in the name of things like stability and finances and normal schedules. Brook Bauer, 23 years old then, was still so young, with so much promise. And besides, the MBA she had just earned from Florida State University, after attaining a bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine, wasn’t going anywhere. Her shoulder, her legs, her athleticism and ability to compete at the highest level in the country and, perhaps one day, the world, however, had a time limit. Niles, Florida State’s longtime beach volleyball coach, nudged Bauer to take a shot at a career on the beach. Let the full-time jobs come later, if at all.

But Bauer is a self-described “all-in type of person,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I didn’t really know — I still don’t — what my plan was in a way. But I was like ‘I’m going to exploit all these cool opportunities. I’m going to go to all of these job fairs and let me do all of these things.’ And then I used my fifth year at FSU to gage if I really want to play volleyball after college because I did have a time where I was unsure about that.”

So she lined up a job at a consulting firm, under the impression that she could pursue a life in two different suits at the same time. She began in September of 2022, a time of year that typically lends itself to working in an office while missing few, if any, events on the beach. But last fall was an unusually busy one, and Bauer had to watch as her friends and partners competed in Chicago and the Maldives and Dubai and South Africa. While her peers racked up medals and points and experiences in faraway and exotic locations, she was in an office…auditing? Doing a job she hadn’t even trained for or studied?

“I know your job isn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows but I was not finding any sort of fulfillment or desire to level up in the organization or any sort of cue that I would normally look for,” she said. “It just didn’t fit me. Not only that but it was holding me back.

“I was waking up at 4 a.m. to lift and condition, had meetings at 7 that would run late into the night, and then trying to practice at 7 p.m. It really adds up. I wasn’t sure for my personality that could work for me, if I really wanted to go for it in beach and see where that can take me, I wasn’t sure if that lifestyle and that personality could get me there. I’d never quit anything in life but I’m glad I did.”

So was Niles. When Bauer ran into her old coach at AVP Central Florida, in December of 2022, a month or so after Bauer quit the consulting firm, Niles couldn’t help but take a dig at her former court 1 All-American.

“Oh you finally quit the job I told you not to do!” Niles told her. “Now you can move on and play professional beach volleyball!”

Oftentimes it takes weeks or months for one to confirm that the major life decision they have made — such as quitting a job that was, by all accounts, an excellent entry level opportunity out of college — was the right one. Such was not the case with Bauer. Her first tournament after quitting at the consulting gig in Tallahassee, Fla. was the Huntington Beach Tour Series last November. She promptly won eight of nine matches alongside Katie Horton and made her first final, losing to Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, a team who hasn’t lost a single AVP match since teaming up at that very tournament.

“I was just so excited to play. I had this new wanting to get-after-it feeling,” Bauer said. “I was relieved because I had taken the step of saying that’s not for me, which was very uncomfortable, and to get the chance to play the following week was super exciting. It’s funny how life works like that. I had to do something really, really hard in order to find this next level of joy and excitement because that’s where I was deciding where I want more of this lifestyle. Very different things I was trying to do but I needed to do that to find where my passion really lies.”

It’s a critical realization for a young talent such as Bauer. The life of a professional beach volleyball is a far cry from the glitz and glamour of other professional athletes. You pay your coach and trainer. You organize your own practices. Your finances are dependent solely on your performance week to week. Even in a scenario where you finish, say, fifth, as Bauer did in the Virginia Beach Tour Series earlier this month, you’re still likely to lose money, as she and Horton did (they won just $250 apiece). You book your own travel, on your own dime and schedule. More often than not, something will go wrong. Take last summer, when Bauer left the country for the first time of her life to play in a pair of Futures events in Poland and Turkiye.

A delay had caused Bauer and Horton to miss their connection, leaving them stranded in the Istanbul airport. A similar delay had left a Chinese team stranded as well. Via Google translate, Bauer and Horton helped the Chinese team get on their new itinerary…which also wound up going less than perfect. Soon, they were sharing a five-hour taxi, conversing via Google translate, just trying to find their way to a random city named Balikesir, which none of them had even heard of, much less been to.

“This was an experience I’d never had before and it was super cool,” Bauer said. “It was a very cool little intro. I had never experienced different cultures outside of the US. I had never traveled. It was stressful, exciting, all bundled into one.”

Can’t get that auditing at an accounting firm.

Not that many would necessarily want that type of experience. But all it took was a few months for Bauer to know that, on the contrary, that is exactly what she wants. Which is why, after Virginia Beach, she and Horton scrambled to make it to a Challenge in Jurmala, Latvia, their first event on the Beach Pro Tour’s second tier. They strung together a pair of upsets over 15^th-seeded Xinxin Wang and Lingdi Zhu of China (21-18, 21-17) and Toni Rodriguez and Savvy Simo (21-17-21-18) and punched their ticket to their first Challenge main draw.

Now she and Horton are signed up for Challenges in Espinho, Portugal, and Edmonton, Canada. It isn’t necessarily to pursue a shot at the Paris Olympics. She knows that isn’t something she’s prepared to pursue just yet, but “any of us would be lying if we said if the opportunity to grind for the Olympics one day was a possibility that we wouldn’t do it,” Bauer said. “It isn’t realistic for me right now, I’m more focused on growth and nitpicking my game and fine-tuning things.

“If you don’t dream big, what’s the point?”

Travis Mewhirter