SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter · Travis Mewhirter

How to Build a Winning Team Culture | John Mayer, Billy Allen, Travis Mewhirter

January 7, 2026·1 hr 15 min·6 clips

John Mayer reveals he's been named National Coach of the Year after LMU's historic 38-win season.

John Mayer opens the episode noting that LMU had its best season in program history — 38 wins, a run to the third set on court one at the national championship, and a national coach of the year award from ABCA. He jokes that the award already feels distant because the team is now young with many players gone. Billy Allen discusses Stanford's fall season, noting that key players including Avery Jackson missed the Manhattan tournament due to international competition and a beach player who joined the indoor team. Travis Mewhirter describes his second fall at Florida State as the best coaching experience yet, attributing the improvement to having relationships with returning players — only one starter graduated from the Gulf Shores 10 lineup. The coaches describe a practice structure of rotating small groups of six players, with full-team practices twice a week, which players said in end-of-year meetings was their preferred format. Travis reflects on moving from the infant stage of coaching to the toddler stage — trying things, being wrong sometimes, but building the confidence to experiment. Billy raises the question of what makes a drill fail, and the group converges on player energy and buy-in as the key indicator, with John adding that start-with-the-why explanation prevents disengagement. John describes an off-season deep dive into arm swing biomechanics with consultant Isaac Nubel, who advised eliminating the traditional throwing-based warmup — which has negative transfer for beach volleyball arm mechanics — in favor of immediate swings against netting at low intensity. Nubel's cues include relaxing to 30 percent power, making a half-moon swing path, and rotating the sports bra to face the road. Billy brings up hearing Karch Kiraly on Gabby Reece's podcast describe cutting social warmup time from the women's national team, calling the results a disaster, with Anson Dorrance reportedly having the same experience. The coaches agree that two to five minutes of unstructured social time before practice is worth protecting. The discussion turns to whether technique is overrated, with Billy arguing that outcome defines technique, not aesthetics. John references a Golf Digest study showing golfers converge at contact regardless of different swing paths. The group discusses biomechanical invariants versus fluctuators, citing biomechanist Franz Bosch's framework. They use Brazilian players Carol and Ana Patricia as examples of athletes with unconventional technique who are supremely efficient. Travis closes with the perception-vs-action insight: most coaching corrects the action rather than asking what the athlete perceived that led to that action, and argues that athletes are rarely ignoring coaches — they are responding to a dynamic environment.

As heard by us

A beach-volleyball conversation about expertise, serving trends, and flexible solutions in the gym.

This beach-volleyball conversation starts loose, then settles into a season-ending recap with Billy Allen and John Mayer joining Travis Mewhirter.

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Why you'd press play

Play this if you want coaching talk that gets specific about serves, passing, and what college coaches are learning right now.

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