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Dana Kabashima Hired as New Youth Director!

By SBVC , 01/05/18, 10:30AM PST

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Dear SBVC Community,

We first want to welcome everyone back from the various degrees of evacuation so many of us endured and hope you all came through with health and property intact. We also want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as we navigated a difficult opening of the travel season during the Thomas Fire. We are very excited as we enter 2018 and the season moves into high gear and we are all intently focused on delivering a world class experience to our players and families this season.

As a reflection of this effort it is with great pleasure that the Santa Barbara Volleyball Club Board and management team announce the hiring of Dana Kabashima to be the Youth Director responsible for all of our youth programs: Blenders, VolleyPints, Madskillz, and our various camps. Many of you may be familiar with Dana, as she is the co-owner of East Beach Volleyball Academy with SBVC alumni Katie Spieler.  Dana was a four-year, D1, full-scholarship outside hitter for Villanova University where she was team captain, recipient of the 1,000 Career Digs Achievement Award, 4-year member of the Big East Academic All-Star Team, and awarded 1st Team All-Tournament.  After college, Dana played professional beach volleyball on the AVP, NVL, and NORCECA tours.  She also enjoyed coaching a club volleyball team at Gary Sato and Sinjin Smith’s HAX volleyball club, and multiple volleyball camps for Marv Dunphy at Pepperdine.  Dana has been trained by some of the best coaches in the country, including Liane Sato, Gary Sato, Marv Dunphy, Gilad Doran, Gene Selznic, and Dane Selznic. More importantly, Dana has a passion for introducing the sport of volleyball to kids of all ages and abilities and she shares the Club's mission of building self-esteem and life skills in all of our young athletes. Dana will be a fun and exemplary role model and we are confident that her value will extend well beyond the Youth Program in the years to come.

Dana will be assisted across our youth platform by Keely Stevenson who has just wrapped up an excellent Madskillz season. Keely played D1 volleyball for UCSB and began her coaching career for SBVC several years in the travel program as a Head Coach and Assistant Coach across various age group; and most recently she has moved into the Youth Program as a coach with VolleyPints last season, and Lead Coach for Madskillz this season. For those of you who have met Keely, we are  sure you will agree her enthusiasm, positive attitude and work ethic will be a great asset to the club at large as she will also be coaching in both the  travel and beach programs, in addition to her work with our Youth Programs.

We are extremely excited about the experience, passion and plans that Dana and Keely will each bring to our Youth Programs as well as adding depth to our coaching staff. Please join us in wishing them the best of luck this season and we wish all of you good fortune as we move in-season!

 

Kind Regards,

SBVC Board of Directors


Dana and Keely can be reached at: SBVCyouth@gmail.com


Dana Kabashima

 

 

 

 

Tag(s): Girls Non-Travel  MadSkills  Training Team  Alumni  14-Regional-Todd  14-Regional-Steve  13-White  12-Regional  12-Blue