For the first time, Florida Atlantic hosted a fall competition at the Beach Burrow. On Saturday, FIU and FGCU traveled to Paradise for a day of exhibition play with Palm Beach Atlantic joining the squads to close out play on Sunday. The Fall season is a stark difference compared to the Spring. Instead of a three month season, the Fall season is a month long. The season is capped off with the AVCA Beach National Championship where pairs, not teams, will compete against each other to decide the individual National Champion for the Fall season. Florida Atlantic has earned two automatic bids to the event thanks to the TruVolley rating. TruVolley is a calculation that takes into account the difficulty of opponents and weighs outcomes against competition. The larger the victory, the better the rating. Florida Atlantic is led by head coach Steve Grotowski. His tenure has brought the Sandy Owls a NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship appearance and a conference USA championship. For Grotowski this weekend is important in seeing pairing connections as he said, “These events allow us to put a bunch of different teams together and test out pairs. When you have 20 players on your roster, the amount of combinations are extensive, for sure. It allows us to move some pairs around and test some different partnerships out, you know, the same way basketball would test out different things.” One of the duos that played together during the weekend was Julia Honzovicova and Ashleigh Adams (pictured above left, Dylan Vo). Both are massive returns for the Sandy Owls as Adams is rated the 22nd overall player in the NCAA while Honzovicova is rated 62nd overall. They both shared their thoughts about the upcoming fall season. Ashleigh Adams Adams has made a name for herself in her first two seasons. She was co-Freshman of the year and recently on the 2024 CUSA First Team All-Conference list. The junior spoke about how playing in different pairs has helped in the past as she said, “We’ve been playing with a bunch of different pairs throughout practice, before we find the permanent partnerships, it’s good for everyone to play with different people, because you never know who is going to click, and when it clicks is when he (Grotowski) starts to keep pairs together. But we tend to stay pretty separate from the fall. And we started that last year, and it worked really well for us and everybody, just across the board, got better ball control skill wise, so then it made everyone better partners for when we were in season.” For personal goals this season Adams shared, “I’m just super excited to keep working with the team, we have Pairs Championship, which we don’t know who’s going yet, but super excited. That’s my personal goal, what I’m working towards. But as a team, I’m really excited. We’re all really in it this year. It feels really united. It’s always united, but we just are all in it for each other and not for ourselves. We can already feel it, and we’ve only been here a few months, so I think that’ll help us a lot during the season.” When it comes to becoming an upperclassman and now leader, Adams explained how the role is “a lot different”. “I see the freshmen going through the same hardships and mental battles that all of us went through as freshmen. So it’s really cool to be able to take them and help them out and let them know it’s okay, everyone’s scared in the beginning, everything will work out. And, yeah, it’s really cool to be on the other side of it now and understand all the ins and outs of it, and be able to share that with the underclassmen.” Julia Honzovicova Honzovicova has a long list of career accolades, including 2024 CUSA First Team All-Conference, 2022 Freshman of the Year, and a part of the 2023 CUSA Pair of the Year. For the fall season, the senior shared how she can spend this time working on herself. “I would love to do this during the Spring season as well, but now I have more space for mistakes and errors. I can find the exact way I want to perform. Just try to find the best way to do that.” The Czech Republic native shared the impact that the Spring season has made for her this Fall, “I decided with the coaches that I would be full time in defense, which meant that I’m not blocking. That was at the beginning of last season. I want to be in defense all the time. I then had multiple teammates and partners, so that was one big challenge for me, to adjust every single time. But at the end of the season, they gave me my previous partner, Ashleigh Adams, and we just started to split, which means that one is blocking, one is defending, and we switch throughout. That was more common to me from previous years. Marketa Svozilova The senior is the school record holder in individual season flight 2 wins, a 2024 CUSA First Team All-Conference member and a member of the Czech Republic National Team. The Summer was eventful for Svoziilova (pictured above, Dylan Vo). She shared her experience from the Summer and what preparation she has made for the Fall, “I competed a lot during the summer for the Czech national team. It was super fun. I was super busy, so I came in slower during this Fall, and just made sure I was rested. I got a week or two of rest, and now I’m just ready to start practicing again and competing again.” She continued, sharing that when she was playing back home, she played defender and was blocking. “It helped me be more versatile. I’m ready to just play with whoever they pick for me and help them as much as I can.” When it comes to pairings, the six-foot senior shared that she is excited to play with all of her teammates. She said, “I just played with Ashley, so that’s nice, because I think this is our second time playing together, although I’ve been here on the team with her for three years. And then I’m playing with Julie. I played with her many times, but it’s always nice to play the Czech style of volleyball. And then I will play with Claire and Sophia. Sophia is the really tall freshman, so I’m excited to play with her, because I get to defend, and I think I like defending more. So, yeah I’m excited about how that goes.” Winning Pairs over the Weekend 32 pairs won during the weekend with the only repeat winning pair being Kate Stoughton & Olivia Strandberg. Grotowski’s pairings gave every member of the team an opportunity to perform during the weekend. Pairings with Adams won five times, the most victories by an individual on the weekend. Six others gained four victories while seven gained three victories. Upperclassman made up the list of the five who only earned two wins, but because they played the least amount of matches. All 20 members of the team earned at least two wins, a great start for an exciting fall season. The pairings from the past weekend can change following practices, and even tournament play in the month of November; which explains why only one pair of teammates were paired more than once. The first tournament for Florida Atlantic will be the weekend of Nov. 2. The Sandy Owls will face Stetson, Tampa, North Florida, and Florida State as qualifying spots are up for grabs for the AVCA Beach National Championships. Remember that the fall is individual based compared to the team style in the Spring.
