EEVB History
East End Volleyball Origin Story:
As a marine biology student at Southampton College on the East End of Long Island in 1971, I was returning from a field trip to a museum. I got on the bus and sat in an open seat next to Bud Spellman, a local Hampton Bays student who lived off campus with his family. We started talking and he asked if I had ever played volleyball. They had an intramural team that was in the playoffs that night and that was short a player. I had played and liked volleyball in gym class, but that was the extent of my experience, which was enough. I played on their team that night where I met Bud’s friend, Gene Schumacher.
Gene introduced me that summer to beach volleyball at Tiana Beach. There used to be 2 full length courts in front of the current Tiana Beach pavilion with a boardwalk between them leading to stairs over the dunes down to the 100+ foot wide beach. Today the pavilion’s deck looks down onto the beach and sand is regularly put in front to protect the building. The current beach is half as wide as wide as it was when I first came to that beach in 1971.
EEVB Founders
Gene was addicted to beach volleyball, and it rubbed off on me. Not only did we go to the beach every weekend and many weekdays to play as much as possible. After we graduated (Gene in 1973, me in 1974), we formed a 6-man team that played in USA Volleyball tournaments (then known as USVBA) at locations in NJ, mostly at NJIT in Newark. Gene met and convinced many of the top NY players at USAV tournaments to come play in grass tournaments in the Hamptons, first at the Hansom House in Southampton and later at the soccer field at Southampton College. The tournaments were fun but also a lot of work. Gene thought volleyball tournaments during the summer in the Hamptons could be a good business but he did not want to put in the time to run them. He had a full-time job teaching inmates at the Suffolk County jail in Riverhead to pass their GED exams. In 1977 he suggested that maybe I would be interested in doing it. I was currently working at The OBI East in Hampton Bays, which only kept me busy weekend nights during the summer months.
Click Below More photos from EEVB: The Early years
In 1977 I arranged the first East End Volleyball tournament, a grass triples tournament, on the grass parking lot of the Oak Tree Inn on West Tiana Road in Hampton Bays. We went there regularly and the owners liked us. We set up 5 courts and had about 15 teams compete, mostly teams from NYC. One could stand in the parking lot on the west side of Tiana Bay and look south to the barrier beach to see The Mimosa Beach Café next to Tiana Beach, one of the hottest beaches in the Hamptons. Looking that direction during our first tournament, I decided that the next event in 1978 would be there.
There were only had 6 courts at Mimosa, which later became Summers Beach Club. We filled the courts quickly and had to go to a qualification process that picked the teams based on their level of play. The 1978 tournament was a big success, and everyone was asking when the next tournament would be held. Beach space was tight on that beach limiting when we could get the beach meaning the next event would not be until 1979, when we scheduled 3 tournaments, one every month.
And it kept growing every year until here we are, in 2026, celebrating our 50th Anniversary season. I often think how different my life and the lives of many others would have been if I had not sat in that open seat on the field trip next to Bud.
The Cuervo Years
From the first 1977 tournament through the 1984 season, EEVB grew slowly and established its name throughout the northeastern US. At this time, the East Coast only had 3 main tournaments, Memorial Day Weekend, July 4th Weekend, and Labor Day Weekend in Virginia Beach. Top players from throughout the East Coast headed to VA Beach those weekends. Any other weekend was fair game for a tournament if the goal was to attract the top players, which was EEVB’s original goal.
EEVB filled in the other weekends, 3 each summer at first. Then 1 or 2 more the next summer until we had to make the program defining decision: Do we hold a tournament every weekend through the summer? The answer was yes and volleyball became less of a recreational activity and more of a business.
In 1984, Fred Sholz, owner of Summers, introduced me to the Jose Cuervo Tequila rep about possible sponsorship. Cuervo was imported by Heublein Spirits, who were located in Hartford, CT. EEVB’s tournaments in the Hamptons were the closest tournaments to their headquarters and in the desirable Hamptons market. Up until this point we had been using Molson beer and later, Bud Light, through their LI distributor Clare Rose, who supplied t-shirts and other prizes and beer for after play parties. That would all change when Jose Cuervo came on board.
In early 1985 I drove to Heublein headquarters and met with Jose Cuervo marketing reps. We discussed my program and they said that they wanted to expand from sponsorship of the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour. They sponsored the tour along with Miller Lite and wanted to expand their brand through local beach volleyball tournaments. EEVB’s early tour for exactly what they were looking for. They asked what it would cost to sponsor our series and I gave them the worst answer of my career: $250/tournament for the 3 events we had planned for 1985. They instantly smiled and said “Don’t worry, we plan to spend more than that.”
Jose Cuervo taught me a lot about marketing events. They had organized press releases to multiple media outlets sent by their marketing firms. They coordinated promotions at local bars leading up to the tournaments. They had color photos featuring players from the AVP to promote each event. They supplied nets and court markers imprinted with the Cuervo logo. And they provided bottles of tequila and Cuervo branded gifts as prizes. The level of professionalism at our tournaments took a big jump once Cuervo became the title sponsor. EEVB was now a business as much as it was a place for Gene and I to play in tournaments. This became evident to me once, while playing, when the marketing director came to me during a match and said he needed something done. I looked over and said as soon as my match was done, I would come help him. I knew at that moment that playing was now secondary for me if EEVB was to continue growing.
With Cuervo as a sponsor, they wanted more tournament sites in addition to the Hamptons. We first expanded to Montauk in 1986 in front of The Waves bar & restaurant. In 1987 we added tournaments on the Jersey Shore at Jenkinson’s in Pt. Pleasant Beach and Joey Harrison’s Surf Club in Ortley Beach, and the first Long Beach tournament. The stakes were raised when, starting in 1986, Cuervo awarded trips to California for the top men and women’s teams to the Jose Cuervo World Championships at Redondo Beach in 1986 and San Diego in 1987. The AVP was a men’s only tour at the time. The winning team in 1986, Eric Pavels (LI) and Dan Barrows (Virginia Beach) were entered into the World Championships while the winning women’s team, Halina Pavels, Lori Stein, Annette Schumacher, and Chee DiMaggio, received the California trip and VIP treatment.
By 1989, Cuervo liked the way our series had developed and decided to expand it around the country with different local organizations running the events. EEVB remained the host for the Hamptons event, in 1990 at Neptune Beach Club, then moving to the new hot spot in the Hamptons, The Hampton Beach Club, in 1990. EEVB was now firmly established as a top volleyball tournament organizer in the Northeast, ready to expand to new beaches.
No Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.