Alaska beach volleyball?
"It's like an oxymoron," said Brittany O'Bryant, a New Hampshire woman visiting Alaska on a two-week vacation.
The last thing the Keene State volleyball player thought she'd do in the Last Frontier was put on shorts and dive around in some sand.
But earlier this month, O'Bryant put on her sunglasses, teamed up with her college teammate Jordan Pokryfki, a 2006 Colony graduate, and finished second at the Fufudabo beach doubles tournament at Springer Park.
"It's going to be so funny when I go back and say I played beach volleyball in Alaska," she said.
O'Bryant joined about 40 other players and spectators -- a relatively large showing for an Anchorage beach tournament.
"It was a record turnout," said Dale Hoffman, who has been organizing beach tournaments in Anchorage since 2006.
This summer, Hoffman scheduled six tournaments at Springer Park with the Junior Championships (Aug. 8) and Open Championships (Aug. 9) still to come.
The Fufudabo events supplement the summer-long Alaska Outdoor Volleyball Association's sand volleyball league that features six-person coed, men's doubles and fours, women's fours and high school girls fours.
AOVA organizer Jim Dooley thinks this summer's days are luring more players to the sand -- and, thanks to Hoffman, to the grass too.
Hoffman, former president of the California Beach Volleyball Association, thought the idea of playing in sand might intimidate Alaskans who spend most of their time on indoor courts.
So he offered grass tournaments, hoping to attract the sand-scared.
Turns out it just took a little adjustment before the indoor players found their beach legs.
"It's way different," Jayme DeHart of Palmer said after her beach debut.
It's different enough that it challenges even the best players. Pokryfki is an accomplished indoor player who last season broke Keene State's career assists record with more than 3,400 and holds school records for assists per match (61) and per season (1,358).
But even she suffered a crushing loss in her first doubles match on the sand.
"Yeah, we got killed," said Pokryfki.
Less movement is better when playing on sand, she said. "The sand sort of absorbs you. But the more we communicate, the less moving we have to do."
The key? Ball placement.
The older, more experienced players have development a knack for placing the ball in an empty spot on their opponents' court with just a flick of the wrist.
They leave the impressive, jump-and-swing attacks to the younger crowd, and yet still win. The most recent men's doubles runner-up was the team of Hoffman, 55, and Leti Sagiao, 55, who lost the championship match to Jeremy Willis, 31, and John Todd, 43.
Both teams plan to compete in the Fufudabo Open Doubles Championships at 10 a.m. Aug. 9 at Springer Park.
Reporter Heather March can be reached at adn.com/sports.
By HEATHER MARCH
hmarch@adn.com