Fun in the Sun and Sand, for Everyone, Is the Mission for East End Volleyball

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, when the parking lots start to thin out at the Southampton Town beaches up and down Dune Road, the party is just getting started at Tiana Beach.

From 6 p.m. until sunset on those weeknights, people descend on the beach, toting coolers and portable speakers, many of them wearing coordinated T-shirts with clever team names on the back: “The Salty Slammers,” “Here for the Sunsets,” “Sets on the Beach.”

They walk down the bright blue beach mat or the wooden ramp at the pavilion and head west, toward the collection of volleyball nets lined up down the beach, setting down their beach chairs and coolers packed with a few adult beverages. The sound of crashing waves, the staccato “pop” of volleyballs being batted back and forth over the nets, and claps and encouragement to teammates are the soundtrack of those nights, with actual songs, like Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun,” filtering in as additional background noise.

It’s a scene that goes on almost every night of the week at other beaches across Long Island, and it’s a tradition that’s nearly 50 years strong.

East End Volleyball has been hosting leagues and clinics for both children and adults since 1977, starting first in East Quogue and eventually expanding to locations from Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays to Long Beach in Nassau County, and many other popular beach spots in between, including Jones Beach State Park, Robert Moses State Park and more.

Rich Heiles founded East End Volleyball in the late 1970s, not long after graduating from Southampton College with a degree in marine biology. Heiles, originally from Lindenhurst, now lives in Hampton Bays with his wife, Kathleen Caulson, who runs the company with him. Her adult daughters from a previous marriage, Sarah and Mary Caulson, are also part of what has become a family business, running East End Volleyball leagues and clinics at Long Beach in Nassau County.

During summers while he was still a student at Southampton College, Heiles would work in the nightclub industry in the area, but during the day, he and his friends would hit the beach. At that time, the hotspot was the beach club scene in East Quogue.

Westhampton resident Andy Rudisen, who died a few years ago, was the unofficial gatekeeper of the one volleyball court at Tiana. Teams would show up hoping to earn time on the court, but if they weren’t deemed good enough, they were essentially shut out. That was what happened to Heiles and his friends. The frustration of that feeling was something Heiles didn’t forget. When he founded East End Volleyball, his goal was to ensure that everyone would get a chance to play, regardless of ability level, and that teams of comparable ability levels would be linked up to make for an enjoyable experience for everyone.

“We wanted to give everybody a chance to play,” he said.

He has certainly achieved that goal. Through dedication and a very organized approach to making schedules and creating partnerships with beaches that have a lot of nets, Heiles has built up a solid reputation for East End Volleyball over the years. The organization now counts an astounding 8,000 members, a number that includes everyone who plays in a league and anyone, including children, who have participated in a youth league or clinic.

In the early days of East End Volleyball, there were eight courts on the sand at a place known at the time as Mimosa Beach Club, in East Quogue. The club eventually became Summers, and another club, Neptunes, opened next door. Eventually, that property was purchased by the Town of Southampton.

During the heyday of those clubs, East End Volleyball began to thrive and turn into a viable business instead of just a hobby for Heiles. They gained sponsorships, notably from Jose Cuervo in the early days, for tournaments.

The initial impetus for creating East End Volleyball had everything to do with simply finding a way for Heiles and his friends to play and gain access to court time. But, unexpectedly, by the 1990s, he had parlayed it into a full-time business.

East End Volleyball moved to its current location at Tiana Beach when Allyn Jackson was the Southampton Town Parks and Recreation director, and allowed what is now 12 courts to be set up there.

At some of the bigger beaches on Long Island where East End Volleyball hosts leagues and clinics, there are more than 70 courts, and on nights when the leagues are on, all of them are filled. At the high end, there are elite teams with real skill, and it runs the gamut all the way to the final court, where Heiles said players, in terms of volleyball skill, are “terrible, but they’re having a great time.”

In addition to the weekday leagues, which include four- to six-player teams, East End Volleyball also hosts two-player tournaments at Long Beach every weekend in the summer. Starting in the 1980s, East End Volleyball began doing work off the island as well, hosting tournaments in New Jersey, Florida, South Carolina, Maryland and Rhode Island. Those tournaments were known to attract top talent as well, featuring seven different players who had participated in the Olympics, including Phil Dalhausser. Heiles said that East End Volleyball ran tournaments up and down the East Coast for years, with a surge of popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, but stopped doing the tournaments off Long Island around the time of COVID.

Running just the leagues at Long Island beaches keeps them busy enough now, he said.

The business has been good to Heiles in more ways than one. He met his wife, Kathy, through volleyball in 2008, while she was playing in a league at Cedar Beach. They were friends at first — she was married at the time — but after she divorced, they eventually started dating and were married in 2017.

During a break from playing on a Thursday night at Tiana in June, Caulson spoke about her first impressions of Heiles, both as a person and as the leader of East End Volleyball.

“When I started playing in his league, the first thing I saw when I saw him was that he was on a computer at the beach,” she said. “I said, oh my God, this guy is so organized. I couldn’t believe it.”

She recalled hosting a “Blood Bash” party at her home in 2009 to raise money and awareness for a friend who needed a kidney donation. She had a blood-donation van come to the party and also had it set up so people could sign up to be organ donors. She asked Heiles if she could email everyone in the volleyball league an invite to the party. It was a great success, she said, with 69 people showing up to donate blood. Heiles came to the party. He was already an organ donor but had never donated blood before.

“And he said to me, ‘I’ll donate blood if you’ll go on a date with me the next day,’” Caulson recalled, smiling as she told the story. “And I said, ‘OK, I will!’”

They went kayaking in Hampton Bays for their first date and then married down in Puerto Rico, at a volleyball tournament.

Caulson is not surprised by the success of the business and gave credit to her husband.

“He’s the most fair person I’ve ever met,” she said. “He’s for the players in every regard. We’re all about the player; we throw player parties, do charity events all throughout the season. He’s such a great guy.”

Walking up and down the beach and observing the players, it’s clear that there’s a wide range of ability levels and a big spectrum in terms of how competitive the teams are. While some teams are coordinating passes and plays with a high level of focus and intensity, others are joking and smiling throughout, having a good sense of humor about serving the ball into the net or miscommunication on a pass.

While in between games, husband and wife Christina and Brian Diehl, who live in Center Moriches, and friend and teammate Christian Creed, a Hampton Bays resident, spoke about why they like the league and coming to Tiana on summer weeknights.

Their team name, “Here for the Sunsets,” gets across the point that they aren’t taking anything too seriously.

“It’s as competitive as you want it to be,” Brian said, about why the league is appealing to so many people.

“It’s just a really nice way to spend a night in the summer,” Creed said. “It gives me the excuse to be on the beach another night of the week.”

“I think a lot of us have stressful jobs, so coming here after work is kind of nice,” Christina said. “You can just chill.”

Her husband shared that sentiment.

“It’s like a mini-weekend,” he said. “It gives you something to look forward to.”

For more information on East End Volleyball, visit eevb.net.