When you hear waves crashing and seagulls squawking, you might think of a balmy, relaxing day at the beach. For Castilleja senior Claire Sun, only one thought crosses her mind: playing beach volleyball.
Now boasting a triple-A rating — the highest for women’s beach volleyball in California — Sun has committed to play the sport at Stanford University after high school. Her journey began at just eight years old, when she started playing for different indoor volleyball clubs and practicing in local gyms. Even at a young age, Sun knew volleyball would play a massive role in her life, especially considering she had the unconditional support of her parents.
“My parents were just really great with supporting me throughout my whole journey,” Sun said. “Even little things they did like driving me to practice reassured me that I had their support.”
However, her trajectory took a pivotal turn during the COVID-19 pandemic. The shutdown of public gyms made it difficult for Sun to keep up with her practice, and she fell out of touch with indoor volleyball.
Despite the lack of practice on the court, Sun discovered a new passion for the sport in the form of beach volleyball. During the pandemic, she would routinely go to local parks with friends and play pickup games. According to Sun, the memories she made at the parks later inspired her to pursue beach volleyball competitively.
“I remember there was always this one mom at the park who would start beach volleyball tournaments and charge ten to fifteen dollars for kids to enter,” Sun said. “That was really nice to see just because there weren’t too many beach volleyball tournaments at the time.”
Even after indoor volleyball was back in full swing, Sun still played beach volleyball in her free time and later decided to play beach full-time at 15 years old. Her love for being outside while playing the sport prompted is what pushed her to shift from indoor to beach volleyball, she said.
“I just really love the feeling of being outside,” Sun said.
As Sun quickly adapted to playing on sand, her height — 5 feet and 6 inches at the time — became less and less of a disadvantage. Sun’s former coach Jacqueline Heler recalls Sun’s go-getter attitude toward the sport despite the physical challenges she faced on the court.
“[Sun] thoroughly impressed me in terms of her skillset, especially because she was so young and relatively small for her age at the time,” Heler said.
Sun’s success in the sport led her to receive several messages from various college coaches, a process that was both overwhelming and thrilling, she said. But the choice was easy: Sun quickly cemented her commitment to Stanford, a dream she has had since the start of her athletic career.
“When I was looking into the recruiting process, I was only choosing between a handful of schools because I wanted to go somewhere that valued athletics and academics equally,” Sun said. “It was a really great feeling when I got recruited by [Stanford] just because I had been eyeing them since day one.”
Sun’s journey has not been without its setbacks, though. Because of the lack of local competition for beach volleyball, she often travels to faraway places such as Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Santa Cruz just for a simple practice or to train with other clubs — making it especially difficult to train consistently, she said.
Sun is also currently recovering from an injury that is inhibiting her ability to practice and train with her teammates. According to her teammate Katerina Matta, Sun pushed herself both mentally and physically to reach the point she is at now.
“I remember right before one tournament [Sun] stepped on a bee in the sand, but she fought through the pain for our team, and we actually ended up winning that tournament because of her,” Matta said.
Like any student-athlete, Sun has also faced challenges in her academic life — specifically when managing school work with her rigid practice times.
“A lot about being a student-athlete is knowing you have to make sacrifices, especially when it comes to schoolwork,” Sun said. “For me, it was a lot of cramming homework on long car rides and flights to tournaments.”
Sun also stressed the importance of balancing sports with healthy outlets. She achieves tranquility through writing poetry and making videos with her friends, both for her school broadcast group and recreationally.
Looking ahead, Sun looks forward to playing for one of the nation’s top-ranked universities and bonding with new coaches and teammates. Although undecided about playing volleyball past college, Sun pushes the message of trying new experiences and always challenging yourself.
“The best way to improve at anything is always to make yourself the worst person in the room. Just keeping an open mind and being resilient was probably the biggest piece of my volleyball career,” Sun said. “There’s not really one right way to play a sport; even in life everyone will operate in different ways, and being open to trying new things is key to success.”
