The Hampton Beach Club

The Hampton Beach Club changed the beach volleyball scene on LI. Through the first 10 years, EEVB had built the foundation for a successful program. The Hampton Beach helped propel EEVB on a trajectory to become the largest beach volleyball program in the country.

In 1988, Larry Hoffman and Andy Hangarter purchased the old Hot Dog Beach, 1 mile west of Summers and Neptune Beach Clubs and named the new site The Hampton Beach Club (HBC). The new site had a longer beach front allowing for up to 16 courts plus a larger parking lot with the bar on top of the dunes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It quickly became the place to go in the Hamptons for the younger crowd, 21 to 35 years old, a top age demographic that sponsors desired. On a sunny weekend, the parking lot was completely packed, the beach barely had an open spot, and the bar area was in constant motion. The sounds of the band could be heard throughout the entire area. The scarce nearby residences were summer rentals with the renters happy to be so close to the HBC.

Sponsors could not wait to bring their events to HBC. In addition to the EEVB tournaments using our sponsors (Bud Light, Molson), tours such as the now national Jose Cuervo Beach VB Series, the DeKuyper/Penthouse (1988) and the DeKuyper/Playboy (1989), the Mizuna 4×4 Play to Paradise Series (1990) all wanted to come to this beach. Corona Light became an EEVB sponsor for a series of coed doubles tournaments that featured some of the best coed matches in EEVB’s history. Top male players such as Eric Pavels, Phil Melese, Rafael Del Valle, Dave Twite all competed, spiking balls that were mostly untouchable. That is unless star female defensive players such as Halina Pavels, Lisanne DiMinno, Jen McGill were on the other side of the net. They regularly popped up tough spikes, many times putting the ball on the net for their partner to put it away for a point. During these years male and female teams played doubles all day Saturday and then competed again Sunday in coed doubles, surrounded by beach crowds who turned their beach chairs towards the volleyball courts as the day went along. It was truly a perfect setup for beach volleyball.

Radio stations fought to have a presence at the tournaments. WRCN in Riverhead had a “Volleyball Hotline” people could call for schedule info. WWHB ran live broadcasts from the tournaments. WALK and WBAB both had a presence at events. Z-100 brought their 30 ft high King Kong blow up to many events.

One of the reasons beach volleyball was so popular at HBC was the emergence of Smitty (Tom Smith) and Flop (Andy Fotopoulos). Local high school students, they were exposed to beach volleyball through a series of Friday afternoon 6-player tournaments EEVB ran at Summers. Both were natural athletes and they quickly picked up the sport. They joined our pickup games on weekdays and weekends when there were not any tournaments. Gen and I were playing them once and after they almost beat us, we looked at each other and said” One days these guys will beat us, and we will never beat them again!) That is exactly what happened. By the time tournaments moved to HBC Smitty and Flop were the local favorites at any East End event. They are featured in many of the Facebook photo albums from these years.