by Garth Meyer
“If you guys don’t come back from this drill looking like sugared donuts, we’re going to make you look like sugared donuts ourselves.”
“That’s a Pier to Pier swim for you Evan, for that mishit.”
“Football, football, football, ballet.”
Dennis Collins has been a Hermosa Beach Parks and Recreation volleyball teacher since 1986.
He also coaches the Peninsula High School boys beach team. Late this summer, he did both from a seated position after a motorcycle accident put him in a wheelchair for 10 weeks.
When he started teaching, Collins worked 40 hours per week at Hughes Aircraft in environmental health and safety compliance. On top of that, he did another kind of training – 30-40 hours per week as a volleyball player, seeking the AVP.
One day, a guy asked him to cover a class for Manhattan Beach Parks and Rec.
“I never imagined the joy of giving feedback, and improving people’s games. It moved me,” Collins said. “It’ll be 40 years in January.”
He never played volleyball until after high school. The Aviation High School Hall of Famer played defensive back on the football team, and ran track. He tied the school record in the 220 meters. So “football-football-football-
“I’m teaching the Peninsula team now to hit that off-switch at the last moment,” he said.
Ballet was also first-hand knowledge for Collins, he was a dance minor at El Camino College, where, in his first year with the football team, a fractured vertebrae at practice led him to stop playing.
So he took up volleyball.
“Immediately, I fell in love with the sport,” he said.
“Dancin’ D”
Collins tells of certain things in his classes; a moonball serve to counter the advantage of particularly tall opponents; of Jim Menges, the 6-foot-2 UCLA All-American setter and beach legend who would say, “You’re only as good as your deep ball.”
Collins learned to coach mostly on his own.
“Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, there wasn’t a lot of (materials),” he said. “So you were forced to come up with your own stuff. Coaching kind of married together dance with the science, and ergonomics from work.”
He has a masters degree in Environmental Health & Safety from Cal State-Northridge. Collins became a certified ergonomist while at DIRECTV, from which he retired in 2015.
“I got an early parachute and took it,” he said.
Along the way, the dance brought in money too. In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, known as “Dancin’ D,” Collins entered contests in South Bay bars, as far down as Long Beach, working it 45 seconds at a time to Prince’s “Erotic City,” “Kiss” and “Computer Blue.”
“Maybe we rule the day,” AVP player Brent Frohoff told him, “But you guys rule the night.”
Today, with the Red Onion replaced by the Shade Redondo hotel, Collins is a married father of two boys, 19 and 16.
While he was in a wheelchair recovering from the motorcycle accident, his younger son, Bryce, or his wife, Kelly, drove him from his Palos Verdes home to Hermosa, where two strong students would carry him from The Strand to a chair between courts, which he taught from.
“It speaks to the commitment. Nothing is going to stop me from doing this,” he said.
Patrick
Hermosa Academy uses courts just south of the city Pier. Past Collins’ intermediate/advanced courts, another voice calls out, from a loudspeaker; it’s Patrick Mejia – the Academy’s main assistant and social director.
“Beer – remote.”
“Princess has been called.”
“Hello Chris, welcome back from Georgia.”
Mejia has worked with Collins for 26 years. He started as a student, then became the beginners class coach. In 2018, Mejia and Collins established the name “Hermosa Volleyball Academy” to delineate the program from others on the beach.
“I want to know your name, and your favorite conspiracy theory,” Mejia says, gathering up students for another Sunday lesson.
He does this at each class, often more than once, with differing prompts, to learn names, and so students can too, thus no one has to say, “Hey you” as a ball drops to the sand.
“They’re enjoying what they’re doing, and the social aspect,” said Mejia, who first played volleyball on concrete courts in Inglewood as an immigrant child from Ecuador.
His “beer-remote” refers to the ready position, crouched down like watching T.V., one item in each hand.
Mejia previously ran “13th Street Activities” and still does events for “Volleyball Ventures,” such as directing casual tournaments.
Hermosa Academy’s Sunday sessions run year-round, with Wednesday night classes when the days are long. Students range from teenagers to those in their 50s and 60s, and a few in their 70s.
The average player stays in the program for three or four of the five to eight-week sessions, Collins said, with some participating for up to a decade, coming and going.
Mejia is a retired mortgage lender.
“It’s been a blessing to be associated with Dennis all this time. Where else can you get out there, just meeting the people from all over,” he said. “I’m getting old, the students have kept me young on that.”
Impact
On June 26, going 70 mph on the 405 North, Collins was hit on his motorcycle by a car changing lanes. The bumper drove into his leg, pushing Collins and the cycle against the center divider, which kept him upright, so he could then “wrestle the alligator.” He hit his emergency flashers and maneuvered across all four lanes to the shoulder, where he was able to finally to stop the Harley Davidson Road Glide and get the kickstand down.
Then the pain hit him: a fractured tibia in his right leg and a broken metatarsus in his left foot.
“Do you know the percentage of motorcycle riders who hit the center divider and survive?” a paramedic asked Collins after he was loaded into an ambulance.
He did not.
“Less than 5%,” the paramedic said.
Seven weeks later, Wednesday, Aug. 13, was the start of the next Hermosa Volleyball Academy session, and soon after, the Peninsula High School beach volleyball season (AAU).
Collins missed the first week of each. He returned for the next, coaching from the beach chair.
“I’ve never had such a challenge getting to the beach five days a week, but I consider it a calling, even though that sounds cheesy,” he said.
With Collins out, and then for his return, the Academy kept to its usual ratio of one instructor for every 10-12 players.
“I really needed assistants when I (was seated) because I couldn’t roam around and provide feedback. You’ve got to have people out there providing feedback, you’ve really gotta stay on top of it,” Collins said. “I told Patrick, if we adhere to that part, I think we can do this as long as we want to.”
“I don’t want to brag, but Dennis is fairly selective; his coaches understand his process,” said assistant John Neyer, who first took Collins’ Hermosa city classes in 2008, after moving from Cincinnati with his wife, to work as a “glorified grease salesman” for Chevron.
“We heard from co-workers, ‘make sure you take the classes with Dennis Collins,’” Neyer said.
Three to four assistants work with the intermediate/advanced group and two work with Mejia and the beginners.
“It really helped me get better quickly, and enjoy the game more, and the social dynamics,” Neyer said.
“Dennis is a strong personality, he’s a big reason why the classes are so successful. I had to reconcile his job with who he was outside of it. It’s not something you’d expect from a carefree, light-hearted Dennis in the class. How does all this fit together? (At work) if you don’t get this right, people could die. But the classes; very welcoming, you have fun the whole time. Dennis really personified that.”
One of Neyer’s peers as a student was Jesus Mejia, who now works with Patrick (no relation) and the Academy beginners.
Some of the other longtime assistants, in the primarily volunteer roles, are Glenn Davis, Dave Fulton, Suni Verse, Jarred Young and Jesse Cole.
Collins’ wife and youngest son teach the Academy’s youth class.
Playing days
“Trust your shoulders.”
“Think of your body as a rebound cushion.”
“Attack, every F–ing time.”
What Collins teaches today was first tested as a player. He was an AVP/Open qualifier 16 times, including five Manhattan Beach Opens. One year, he and longtime partner Lars Hazen faced no. 2 seed Mike Dodd and Tim Houland in the first round.
“Dodd (a future Olympic Silver Medalist) snapped a ball straight down to the sand and bounced it 10 rows deep into the audience,” Collins said. “It was fun to earn the right to go out and get your ass kicked.”
After 12 years of competition, Collins was a made man: he earned a AAA rating, given by the California Beach Volleyball Association (CBVA).
“They wouldn’t let me buy a drink for six months,” he said. “The bars close to the beach, if someone was working in there who knew volleyball. In some bars, up to a year.”
The 5-foot-11 Collins’ playing career featured six knee surgeries and two shoulder repairs. An achilles tendon was almost severed, and a wristbone shattered, though he was not fully aware of it until after that season was over.
He played from 1979-2003, then refereed for three years.
Before teaching on the sand, Collins was a player-coach for North Redondo Chapel, a six-man indoor church league team.
He co-founded the annual Smackfest tournaments with Bill Sigler, created its rules and helped run it for 13 years.
Collins met his wife on the sand. Kelly was a student in his class, after moving from Louisiana.
“When you come out here, you go to the beach, and then you want to surf or play volleyball. She picked the latter. Lucky for me,” he said.
In class, “I slowly weaned off of the feedback for her, hoping she would decide to move on, so I could ask her out,” Collins said. “I always felt like the Hermosa gig was a good one and I didn’t want to jeopardize it.”
The plan played out as hoped.
“When I saw her competitive fire, I thought, this could work,” he said.
Epilogue
“It’s hard for me to believe Dennis has been at it for 40 years; the energy, enthusiasm he brings,” said Celina Caovan, who took four sessions of the Academy starting late last year. “He breaks down the movement and makes it digestible for everyone.”
“You see people out there playing on the beach, it looks intimidating,” said Caovan, a young physical therapist. “But Dennis and Patrick take this activity and make it feel like a family, a community. For me, the friendships and family are first, then volleyball.”
During her last session, Collins was in the chair with two medical boots on.
“I’m a kinesthetic learner and a visual learner; the way that he coaches and teaches, he simulates that, the actual mechanics, demonstrating the drill,” she said.
Is Caovan in the classes now?
“Now I’m just surfing.”
She met her surf instructor in the Academy. ER
