Izabella Duchaine '21 Recruiting Profile

I began playing beach volleyball at 13 years old mainly as cross training for court volleyball.  I immediately became a big fan of the sport and started entering tournaments to improve my play.  Entering my Junior Year of High School I started focusing more on court and spent the summer attending a lot of court focused camps and playing in a lot of grass tournaments as they better fit my schedule.  Everything change in March of that year when one of my partners wanted to enter a beach tournament.  It was a cold and rainy day in Nor Cal and I loved every moment of tournament, the sportsmanship with all of the players and coaches involved and the overall feeling of joy the sport brought me.  Soon after this the Covid19 shutdown set in and it wasn't until late spring that I was able to start playing beach again.  Since then i have spent many hours practicing, playing in tournaments and just playing for fun and my love of the sport keeps growing.  I originally was planning on playing court in college but after some soul searching I know that beach is the best path for me.