By Taylor Phillips
Copy Editor
Costa Sophomore Taylor Dunlap is serving up volleyball lessons to kids in the community to help them learn and improve upon new volleyball skills.
Dunlap plays with the Sunshine Volleyball Club, which has a location within the South Bay. She also plays on the Costa beach and indoor volleyball teams, but due to the pandemic, she was only able to play with her beach volleyball team during their season.
“I started playing club volleyball when I was nine years old,” Dunlap said. “I decided to play because I wanted to try out a bunch of different sports to see what I liked the best.”
Dunlap’s club director gave her the idea to start teaching volleyball skills to children who were interested in the sport. After getting the opportunity to work and help kids, she found a passion for teaching and wanted to continue to help them learn about volleyball.
“My club director recommended me to a mom who wanted her daughter to start playing [volleyball], so I started doing weekly lessons and then I realized coaching was really fun and wanted to do it more often,” Dunlap said.
Dunlap teaches kids ranging from eight to 12 years old, and she usually teaches the classes at 15th Street beach in Manhattan Beach. The number of kids she teaches at a time also ranges, as it depends on whether they prefer group clinics or private lessons.
“I put an add up on Nextdoor for anyone in the area who is interested [in volleyball lessons] and by word of mouth,” Dunlap said.
According to Dunlap, she asks the students before every lesson if there are certain skills that they want to focus on during the lesson. Towards the end of each lesson, she has the students play a game that allows them to use all the skills they focused on during the lesson.
“I always ask before we start the lesson if there is anything specific they want to work on,” Dunlap said. “If they don’t have anything, I usually do a little bit of every skill. We will start off with ball control, then get into passing, setting, hitting, serving and at the end of the lesson, I will end it with either a scrimmage type game or something competitive so they can apply the skills we worked on. If I am only coaching one kid, I will do a one versus one with them. Otherwise, I will have them play whoever else is there.”
According to Dunlap, each lesson is an hour long and she encourages her students to bring friends so that there are more students at the lessons. According to Dunlap, she really enjoys teaching the students more about volleyball and hopes she will be able to teach them all she knows about the sport.
“I love volleyball and I just want to pass on my knowledge of the sport and hopefully help them to build the same love for it as I do,” Dunlap said.
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