John Moran doesn’t see himself ever winning an AVP tournament.

For a man who grew up using the sand volleyball court in his backyard as a G.I. Joe battlefield, it’s not a groundbreaking revelation. It doesn’t mean, however, that he’s not on a mission. From top-10s on the sand to 12-hour days in the business he founded, Moran structures his life around reaching his goals. Where volleyball fit into his plan hasn’t always been clear.

One of seven children, Moran grew up with three athletic older brothers.

“All my brothers played sports, so it was very competitive,” Moran says as he recalls being nine and playing football with his 16-year-old brother. “He didn’t treat me like a nine-year-old.”

Having grown up in Phoenix as a basketball player, perhaps the competitive environment enabled 6’5” Moran to play college volleyball after only picking up the sport as a high school senior. The University of Arizona doesn’t have a varsity men’s volleyball team, so Moran joined the club team.

“I was pretty much out there as a practice dummy. I was so bad, it was awful,” Moran says of his first year as a Wildcat. “I don’t even know why they let me on the team.”

They must have seen something he didn’t. Moran went on to become the team’s president, overseeing a club sport that offered eight scholarships behind $75,000 of corporate funding per season. “Other teams were taking school buses. We took flights to get to our club games,” he says.

Moran graduated in 1998 and soon after moved to California to pursue volleyball while working full-time. The luxury of the Arizona club team began to fade, as did others’ belief in Moran’s goals.

“I’ve always had a concept of working full-time and being a top-32 player,” says Moran, who achieved the feat for the first time in 2009. “When everybody said it couldn’t happen, I just kept pushing forward. I don’t train maybe as much as the next guy, but I compartmentalize every part of my life.”

A significant compartment of Moran’s success has been playing with the right partners.

“A lot of it is that I’ve played with better players,” he says, rattling off the names of former partners Casey Patterson and Anthony Medel and 2009 teammate Mike Placek. “You only go as far in beach volleyball as your partners.”

Moran has come far in the AVP rankings, from 61st in 2007 to 43rd in 2008 to 29th this year. He never earned more than $1,800 in prize money in a season through 2007. Moran won more than $8,000 last year and more than $15,000 in 2009.

“I always wanted to be a professional athlete, and to do it in funnest sport ever created, I just love it,” he says. “I am NOT the best athlete on the Tour. I’m not the fastest, I’m not the biggest, I don’t jump the highest. I call it my passion project.”

Whether Moran can make it on Tour is no longer in doubt. The 33-year-old Redondo Beach resident set a career high by finishing seventh in front of family and friends in Chicago in August.

“You have no flippin’ idea how awesome it was,” he says of setting a personal best in the city where he met his wife Kelly six years ago.  “Chicago has always been a big deal for me. We treat it as an anniversary. I took whatever prize money we won and blew it there. It was phenomenal.”

A few years ago, Moran’s life had become more of a grind than a party. After working in corporate America for eight years, he quit his job in 2006.

“I had gone through all the pros and cons. I’d never be able to do what I wanted to do if I worked for somebody else,” he said, noting his best volleyball seasons have come since he made the career transition. “I was on a plane all the time and trying to play volleyball on weekends. I was OK but I wasn’t great. It wasn’t where I wanted to be in my life.”

Six weeks after quitting his job, Moran founded supply chain management and logistics company STARR International Enterprises. The career move made a jolting impact on his life.

“The first year and half were brutal. I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to survive,” Moran says. “For the first year and a half, I thought my wife was gonna kill me.”

Through self-imposed structure and 85-hour work weeks, Moran took his company over $1 million in revenue this year. He recently sold 10 percent of STARR in a move that gave him, his wife and his two-week-old twins “some cushion. If you told me in ’06 that I’d have to spend 18 months to grind for the life I have today, I would’ve done it.”

The life he has today remains “very goal-oriented” and “very structured.

“My days are all the same: Get up at 5:30, at the office by 6:30 until 3, train at the beach from 3 until 4 or so, spend time with family, go to bed between 10 and midnight,” Moran says of his offseason routine, which also consists for four gym workouts per week. "Do I see myself ever winning a tournament? No. I don't train for that. My goal is to compete at a high level."

With his level of play and business profile ascending, Moran aims to blend his two careers more than in the past. He recently hired fellow AVP pro Ivan Mercer at STARR. Furthermore, in addition to sponsoring himself, Moran wants to sponsor another AVP athlete in 2010.

Moran also has a more ambitious individual goal for 2010: qualify for King of the Beach. To pull it off, Moran will have to jump 13 spots in the rankings coming off a career year. He’s well aware of it.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate to knock off a lot of goals,” he says. Moran set his sights in 2009 on winning the MotherLode Pro-Am in Aspen, Colo., cracking the AVP’s top 32, and posting a seventh-place finish. Having accomplished all three gives him reason to be optimistic.

“I don’t know how to get to the top 16, but I figure what the hell, give it a shot,” he says. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Regardless of his volleyball ranking, Moran has a family and business to take care of. “My plate is completely full. I’m not adding anything else,” he says.

Moran doesn’t plan to subtract anything, either. Playing on the AVP, having a family, and running a business creates a triad that keeps his life in balance.

"That’s the way I’m meant to be—if one thing goes, other things suffer,” Moran says. “It all works, it’s all I’ve got time for, and I certainly don’t want to miss anything when I’m doing one of them.”

His structured lifestyle keeps him from missing the most important things, AVP winner or not.