In the summer of 2017, Creighton’s All-American setter Lydia Dimke had no idea what she was going to do when she finished her indoor career and undergraduate degree — and she only had one semester left to figure it out.

One thing she did know, she was not ready to stop competing, move home to Minnesota, and get a job. 

The 6-foot-3 setter, who was named the Big East Player of the Year in 2016, had the size and skill to sign with a pro team overseas, but Ryan Meek, one of the assistant coaches at Creighton, offered up another suggestion.

He asked her, “Hey, have you ever thought about playing beach?”

Dimke has played very little competitive beach volleyball in her life, and getting her masters wasn’t really something she had considered, but when Meek explained how she could use her fifth year of eligibility to play NCAA beach, Dimke was all about it. 

She began going on visits to various schools and ended up committing to the South Carolina beach program a few weeks later.

We have two more signees to announce and celebrate! First up is @Lydia_Dimke, a third-team All-American in 2016 for @CreightonVB. She'll join the #Gamecocks after hopefully another deep run in the @NCAAVolleyball tournament this fall! pic.twitter.com/socv0xVuw9

— Gamecock Beach VB (@GamecockBeachVB) November 10, 2017

Moritz Moritz, head coach of the Gamecocks, has had plenty of success adding indoor transfers to his roster. During the 2017 season, Wichita State transfer Katie Zimmerman played in the No. 1s, No. 2s, and No. 3s flights, while Colorado State transfer Adrianna Culbert spent the entire season either in the No. 1s and No. 2s. Both Zimmerman and Culbert and their partners earned berths to USA Volleyball’s Collegiate Beach Championship at the end of the 2017 season. 

Despite the growth of beach volleyball at the junior level and more and more athletes specializing in the outdoor game, Moritz says he doesn’t think the trend of indoor players making the transition to the beach game for their fifth and final season of eligibility will slow down anytime soon.

“Indoor will still have a pretty big draw to the 6-foot-plus, very athletic six-rotation outside hitter or multi-talented, multi-skilled setters,” Moritz explained. 

Division I beach volleyball teams are limited to six scholarships, which coaches are permitted to split into partial awards. Indoor, on the other hand, has a maximum of 12 full scholarships to hand out, so if money is a factor indoor is often a more attractive choice for top athletes and their families as they make their college choice.

Only a few of top level kids who have size and skill will choose to commit to beach volleyball full-time, and, for the time being, most of them are going to the most successful programs like USC, Pepperdine, and UCLA. 

For South Carolina — and other similarly positioned teams — picking up indoor transfers for their grad year has been a great way to add some size to their rosters.

“We’ve kind of depended on [indoor transfers] the last couple of years,” Moritz said. “We’re starting to get bigger, nowhere near where a UCLA or a Southern Cal or even like an FIU or an LSU; they’re very tall, very athletic. We haven’t been able to counter with our high school level recruits, but have been able to counter with some of our transfers.”

.@GamecockFB #GreatMindsThinkAlike #GradTransfersWelcome pic.twitter.com/u5y01KLvfT

— Gamecock Beach VB (@GamecockBeachVB) August 1, 2017

With plenty of contributions from transfers Zimmerman and Culbert, South Carolina beach volleyball had its best season to date in 2017. The Gamecocks played 13 matches against opponents ranked in the top 15, and yet still set a program record for wins in a season and earned a bid to the inaugural NCAA beach volleyball championships in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

“I will always say that the advantage will go to the student athlete that is playing in that surface. So the beach kid that is training in the sand year-round is going to have the advantage,” Moritz said. “But some of these crossover players that maybe have some beach experience in the past and are athletic and are tall definitely have tools that can make an immediate impact.”

Regardless of experience in the sand, something that grad transfers bring is a strong work ethic and sense of team culture. 

“Playing with 13 different girls on a team and six on the floor at one time, you really have to learn how to play well together as a team,” Dimke said. “The [South Carolina beach] coaches were saying they really like how indoor girls bring that team camaraderie and discipline and work ethic because indoor is a little bit more serious and formal and strict, so we kind of come from that hardworking background.”

Here's what Coach Moritz had to say about another incredible graduate transfer joining the #GradChanceU gang here at South Carolina: pic.twitter.com/1vkhnlaLOS

— Gamecock Beach VB (@GamecockBeachVB) November 10, 2017

In addition to Dimke, some other well-known indoor players will make their beach volleyball debuts this spring, including former Wisconsin middle blocker Haleigh Nelson, now a member of the LSU beach team; former Michigan State middle/opposite Allyssah Fitterer, now on the Hawaii beach roster; Chloe Reinig, another former Spartan, who will take the sand as a member of the Loyola Marymount squad this spring; and Cierra Simpson, a former Colorado libero, who will join Reinig at at LMU.

Helping to fill out the South Carolina roster this spring will be Clemson grad transfer Leah Perri and Duke grad transfer Cadie Bates.

Of course, the transition from the hard court to the beach can be extremely frustrating. Nelson, Fitterer, Reinig, and Simpson have all had the entire fall to get acclimated, but once Dimke gets to Columbia, she’ll only have two months before the Gamecocks kick off the 2018 season. 

“We have about four or five weeks to inundate them with as much beach as we can before the season starts, but as competition begins, you’re still in some capacity learning on the fly,” Moritz said. “There were times last season where we’d be at like the CCSA tournament or even in Gulf Shores, and one of our transfers, Dri from Colorado State, was still learning all kinds of new beach things at that point. You’re just learning constantly but you’ve gotta get them up to speed with their conditioning and their timing and their understanding of that part of it before anything else can really connect.”

Just a few short months ago, Ali and Dri started their careers here with a HUGE three-set win over #11 FIU to key the 3-2 comeback win! #TBT pic.twitter.com/wJIhwBoBEz

— Gamecock Beach VB (@GamecockBeachVB) July 20, 2017

One of the most frustrating things for transfers from the indoor game is having patience while their body catches up to their mental grasp of the game.

“Eventually, once your conditioning and once your sand legs and once your timing kind of all catch up to what your mind is doing and the way that you’re seeing and playing the game in your head, that’s when the transition happens, but that takes several weeks,” said Moritz.

Once Dimke makes that transition, watch out. Although a two-year starting setter at Creighton, Dimke started her collegiate career at Purdue where she also played outside hitter. With serve receive and attacking experience as an outside and elite setting skills, not to mention a 6-3 frame that makes her the tallest player on the South Carolina roster, opponents won’t know whether to serve her or her partner.

With only one year of eligibility remaining — as opposed to some indoor transfers to the beach game who are able to get two seasons of beach in — Dimke will soon be facing another big decision. Perhaps she’ll go back to indoor and go overseas to compete professionally, or maybe she’ll fall in love with the beach game and try her luck on the pro tours here in the States.

For now, she’s just excited to be still competing.