We caught up with Nygaard to talk about making the switch to the beach and his worst enemy on the court.

Q1: Why did you decide to switch from indoor to beach volleyball?

JEFF NYGAARD: There was a meeting of the minds in that I no longer wanted to play indoor and the indoor team no longer wanted me to play for them. I had actually decided that volleyball was a thing of the past and that I wanted to come out to California and explore going back to school, getting into coaching and trying new things … I explored getting into school and I was all prepared to do that but things kept getting in the way. Then all of a sudden I started playing beach with a buddy of mine, and it kind of just took off from there. Never really went back to school, and the beach just kind of exploded for me.

Q2: Do you regret not going back to school?

JEFF NYGAARD: No. I look at it in this light: I’m still able to play at a level that I like, meaning that I don’t feel too old or beat up or anything like that. While I’m still able to do that, I wanted to give myself two years to see if I actually had it in me to play beach. I like where things are going so I’m going to continue to do it for as long as I can, bottom line. And why shouldn’t I? In the meantime, when I have time in the off-season, I’ll try taking some classes or doing some other outside-volleyball things to see where my interests lie.

Q3: What was the hardest part about switching to beach?

JEFF NYGAARD: Probably all the ingrained reactions that I have from playing indoors that no longer hold true on the beach. For example, if you’re indoors playing defense and somebody hits the ball at you, if your first reaction doesn’t touch it or dig it, the ball is coming at such a fast pace that you’re not going to get it. So you learn to make that quick initial move, but if the ball gets by you, you don’t have to really follow up on it. That held completely false on the beach, where the ball isn’t as fast. I would have that initial step, but the ball would still be in the air and I wouldn’t have the next step. I didn’t know how to continue through. It’s little intricacies like that that I kept encountering, and its taken me forever to train those out, but its gotten a lot better. There’s definitely a learning curve until you get your “sand legs.” When you first get out there your legs are burning, you just can’t move, its painful and its so frustrating because there are balls that you know you can get to, but you can’t because your legs just aren’t there. Then all of a sudden you start touching that ball, and the next thing you know you’re doing whatever you want with it.

Q4: Do you like the different atmosphere of beach volleyball?

JEFF NYGAARD: The atmosphere itself, I absolutely like it. There were times traveling with the national [indoor] team that if we had our shirts untucked we’d get fined, or if we had our team hat on backwards we’d get fined. Its just ridiculous things like that – we’re not winning any matches and we’re worried about how our shirts look. Little things like that drove me nuts. Whereas on the beach, you obviously want to be presentable, but how presentable can you really be when you’re just wearing a pair of shorts? Somebody once told me, you can only worry about the little things once the big things are fixed, so if you’re winning matches, yeah, then you can start worrying about “Do I look presentable,” this and that. But by and large if you’re winning, that speaks louder than anything else you can do.

Q5: What makes you and your partner Dain Blanton such a good team?

JEFF NYGAARD: The thing I like about us as a pairing is our work ethic, especially Dain’s work ethic. He’s willing to put in whatever time it takes to fix the problems we have, or to fine tune what we do have. He has an internal barometer for his level play, and if it drops below that then he refocuses and just gets it done, which is something that I really respect. Even in just a little scrimmage, there are times where we do something we both know we could have done better and we look at each other like, “We gotta pick this up a little bit.” It’s just that knowledge of his expectations. I have the utmost respect for that hard work that I enjoy being around because it makes me play better and I get better results out of everything.

Q6: Does Dain have any amusing habits when you travel?

JEFF NYGAARD: Are you digging for dirt?

A little.

JEFF NYGAARD: Well, he’s been on tour for like eight years. So other teams with some international experience but not a lot, they’ll go low-end on hotel rooms and try to save a buck here and there, but Dain kind of leads the good life. He knows the system. If we go play in Norway, we can each get our own hotel room because FIVB main draw players get their hotel rooms paid for. So if we work the system just right, we’ll have both of our rooms paid for, whereas other players don’t know about that. Dain has those higher expectations but he also knows how to make the system work for him.

Q7: Is it easier having just one other person on the court to communicate with?

JEFF NYGAARD: Easier and harder. Harder in that if it’s just you and another guy, if you make a mistake you can’t hide it. There’s a sense of responsibility that is just innate to two-man beach. But I also like six-man, the team work aspect. That means there are six different personalities out there, and the teams that are most successful are the ones where people just know what they’re supposed to do. I thought that was the best part about the game. When my team was successful, yes, communication was nice, but it was like we didn’t need to. We just knew what was going on. That to me was the greatest feeling.

Q8: Who’s the hardest person for you to play against in competition?

JEFF NYGAARD: Myself. I seem to beat myself quite often! Whether its something completely stupid, or I don’t know … I don’t think there’s one specific person who I have a problem with. People have the most success against me when I just let down a little bit, when I don’t play at the level that I should.

Q9: What do you do in that situation?

JEFF NYGAARD: Ahhh, I’ll get back to you on that one when I figure it out. Actually I have a habit of just relaxing, of not going after balls as hard as I should or not having the discipline to do the right footwork or this or that. When that happens, I kind of repeat to myself -- I wouldn’t say it’s a mantra -- I just kind of say, “Let’s be disciplined, let’s do the stuff that you’re supposed to.” That kind of helps.

Q10: What’s the sweetest thing about playing volleyball for a living? Because I’d trade places with you in a heart beat.

JEFF NYGAARD: There are too many things to really narrow it down to one! My volleyball fix comes from the fact that I put in a certain amount of time, energy -- I don’t want to use the word sacrifice because its not like I’m a martyr or anything – and if you don’t get the results you aren’t happy with the way things go, but we’ve had results. So it kind of builds on itself. You have success and you want to work that much harder to have that much more success. That’s my personal fix about volleyball, it just feels good to work that hard and then to be able to come out with finishes that I like.