Gold Medalist Highlights AVA's Give-Back Weekend

Donate to AVA's Hawaiian Ancestry Scholarship here!

"Super stoked to be able to come to the islands and be part of the AVA clinics! What a worthwhile endeavor to support AVA in lowering the financial hurdles for kids that struggle to be able to pay for instruction in the sport I love. Hopefully I was able to help a few kids learn about the game that maybe wouldn’t have normally been able to be a part of a college coaches clinic!”
--Todd Rogers

Kanaha Beach Park, Kahului, HI - Aloha Volleyball Association hosted Olympic Gold Medalist, Todd Rogers for a free and open beach volleyball clinic. The 2008 Olympian was the headliner of AVA’s Give-Back Weekend. 

Todd Rogers, head sand coach at Cal Poly, ran the free beach clinics on Saturday at Kanaha. Rogers, nicknamed ‘the professor’, lived up to his name by sharing his world class training techniques.

The Give-Back Weekend included three free volleyball clinics from NCAA D1 Coaches, a beach cleanup and a new scholarship (link) for volleyball players with Hawaiian Ancestry (click here to donate). The weekend was a big success and saw volleyball players come from all over the state: Hana, Lanai, Molokai and Oahu. 

Friday morning, adult members of AVA and coaches staged a cleanup at the courts at Kanaha: Picking up trash, landscaping and tilling the courts flat and deep to prevent injuries.

“It is a great privilege to be able to work with athletes from the island help grow the game. We had a lot of fun and look forward to this event growing.”   --Michael Seemann

On Sunday, Michael Seemann, Portland State, and Dylan Hamilton (link), University of Portland, teamed up to train kids all day long at Seabury Hall. The University of Portland co-head coach graduated from Seabury where his high school team won a State Championship (link). And the connection runs deeper: Hamilton’s first volleyball coach was AVA club director, Scottie Zucco. From there he played beach for Zucco and ultimately got his first coaching gig running AVA’s Summer Camp (link).

"Dylan holds a special place in my volleyball heart because we share the same passion. Now he's been in the NCAA collegiate ranks for a couple years and our relationship has changed. I call him all the time for tips -- it’s funny how my student has become my teacher.”  
​--Scottie Zucco

Donate to AVA's Hawaiian Ancestry Scholarship here!

All the weekend activities were geared toward raising awareness for AVA’s new scholarship. The Hawaiian Ancestry Scholarship (link) provides money to help kids get more off-island exposure. Volleyball players on Maui have a high financial barrier to getting to off-island tournaments where they can be seen by college coaches. Maui kids can incur travel costs upwards of $4000 per year (link).

The scholarship will award club-members ages 15-17 travel money to attend important mainland tourneys. The first distributions are scheduled for October 1st, a couple weeks before the 2020-21 season.

“We felt that our club needed to do more with our name and our position in the volleyball community. We’re a youth sports club that’s operated on Maui for 12 years -- we need to do our part to help remove some of the financial barriers of learning and traveling to big tourneys.”  --Scottie Zucco

If you’d like to support AVA’s Hawaiian Ancestry Scholarship, donations are being accepted here. 

Next year's event will be December 11-13, 2020. Contact AVA to get involved.

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