As another season for Florida Memorial University beach volleyball winds down, it’s been nearly four years — the equivalent of an athlete’s college career — that the program has been around.
FMU carved out its place in history in 2019 when the school announced it was adding beach volleyball as a varsity sport, making it the first and only HBCU to do so.
Marrita Crockett-Mouton, FMU’s first-ever coach, shared the story of how this journey began.
“So actually during my interview, President (Jaffus) Hardrick and AD (Ernest) Jones called my head coach at FIU and asked if they could interview me for the head indoor position. At the end of my interview, President Hardrick asks, ‘Can you start a beach volleyball team?’ And I’m like, ‘In my sleep. I just did that at FIU.’”
Crockett-Moulton said that bringing beach volleyball to FMU meant a lot to her personally.
“It feels amazing,” Crockett-Moulton said. “This is the second time that I’m starting a beach volleyball program and I feel like I’m a part of that pioneering group that’s growing the sport. It’s an honor to bring beach volleyball to an HBCU and the African-American community as a whole because it’s a sport that our community isn’t exposed typically to.”
“Now, we’ll be able to show students that there is another sport that they can use as a vehicle to earn a scholarship and further their academic and athletic careers.”
The Lions played their first match on Feb. 21, 2020, at Saint Thomas University versus Southeastern University.
Among many of the challenges for the newly minted program was finding places to practice and play. Nearby Saint Thomas opened their courts for practices and games. Florida International University, where Crockett-Moulton had previously coached, offered to scrimmage against the Lions. The team also played a few games against Division II opponents in proximity to the FMU campus.
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Another issue was fielding a team, Moulton Crockett said, was that “we didn’t really have enough time to recruit a separate team.”
Indoor volleyball players had to transition into beach players, but only one athlete on the roster had any experience.
The Lions went 1-7 in their first year. It was a season that Crockett-Moulton described as “we got a lot of experience getting beat up.”
The Lions showed promise in their sophomore campaign, compiling a 5-9 overall record and going 3-2 in the Sun Conference. The FMU athletic motto for that calendar year was “Leave a Legacy” and the team did just that, winning the first-ever Sun Conference tournament championship.
Winning that title was an achievement that Crockett-Moulton called “powerful and humbling.”
Crockett-Moulton stepped down following after the 2021 season. She is an assistant coach at Florida International.
Former Philander Smith head volleyball coach Jasmine Washington was named as the next FMU coach last April.
The Lions are currently 0-9 on the season with two regular-season games left to play. Though FMU has struggled in 2023, the program charted a course that other HBCUs can consider following in the future.
“On a national level, regardless of how many people know about it or not, we know we started something,” she said. “Whenever someone does hear about it, we’re going to inspire the next kid that wants to pursue beach volleyball. And you know the next HBCU that wants to buy into beach volleyball and know we started that.“
