Santa Monica Beach Club - Volleyball

The History of SMBC

Welcome to the Santa Monica Beach Club (SMBC), a junior club volleyball organization for female athletes based out of the San Fernando, San Gabriel and Santa Clarita Valleys near Los Angeles, California.

SMBC is one of the premier volleyball clubs in Southern California, where for more than a quarter-century it has developed some of the finest young athletes in the region.

Loyalty, hard work and perseverance, sportsmanship, and the quest for team and individual development, achievement, and triumph: these are the pillars of our organization and guide our players and coaches to greatness and fulfillment. Our 27 years of success on the court and an exemplary reputation within the volleyball community is testament to that fact.

The story of SMBC is actually a tale of two clubs. It begins with renowned coach Mike Norman, who founded the Santa Monica Beach Club for Boys in 1982. Practicing out of Santa Monica High School, SMBC teams found instant success and by the time Norman retired ten years later, the club had brought home as many as six gold medals in Junior Olympic competition, as well as a host of silver and bronze.

In 1992, just as Norman was nearing the end of his reign, a new club launched in the Los Angeles area. Founded by former Harvard-Westlake High School Head Coach Jesse Quiroz, four-time recipient of the Southern California CIF "Coach of the Year" award and a three-time CIF State Championship winner, the H-W Foundation Volleyball Club for Girls proved to be a place where top-tier coaching met impassioned players and success, again, was instantaneous. With similar goals, principles, and philosophies, it was only a matter of time before Santa Monica and the H-W Foundation came together, and proved a perfect fit; the merger of the two powerhouses under the Santa Monica Beach Club name cemented SMBC's place in the upper echelons of club prestige and achievement. It is currently one of the longest tenured clubs in the Southern California Volleyball Association (SCVA), if not the country.

With one of the most comprehensive training schedules in Southern California, SMBC has proven its dominance in recent years with strong finishes across a multitude of age levels at both local and national tournaments, including the Las Vegas Invitational and such Junior Olympic Qualifiers as Colorado Crossroads in Denver, the Lone Star Classic in Austin, Northern Lights in Minneapolis, Big South in Atlanta, and the Mideast Classic in Indianapolis.

SMBC teams may be consistently found Division One of the SCVA regional power league across all age levels, as well in the Gold Championship Bracket at the prestigious year-end Volleyball Festival. SMBC teams have finished in the Sweet Sixteen at the Festival twenty-nine times since 2006, including '06, '07, and '09 tournaments that saw SMBC teams in the Sweet Sixteen in all seven age groups, an incredible accomplishment unequaled by any other club in the country. The pleasure of success is one thing; the individual growth, development, and fulfillment of club players (and their parents) is another, and equally important, if not more so. The truest measure of success for the Santa Monica Beach Club, therefore, is its rate of player return.

In 2008, over 80 girls returned to play for SMBC, more than two-thirds the roster from the previous season. Of that number, an astonishing 70% were in their third year or more with the club.

At SMBC, these athletes find: one of the best coaching staffs in Southern California; one of the most structured and reputed training regimens in the region, with multiple weekly practices and additional skill- and position-specific clinic sessions; a club with strong and old-fashioned ideas of loyalty and a willingness to work to find space for returning players; a club that has sent 75 senior girls off to play collegiate volleyball since 2006, the majority with financial aid; and a community that encourages open communication between parents, coaches, and players, with a strong administrative staff.

Our coaching staff is truly one of the finest in the region, including in total more than 275 years of coaching experience.  Volleyball is a sport of passion: passionate players, passionate parents, passionate coaches. We hope that at SMBC our passion shows through clearly in everything we do, and that no matter where you are or what you are doing, your passion for this excellent sport continues to grow and evolve in the most fulfilling ways.

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