When I was 13 years old, I only wanted to be one person: Stefan Edberg. Sure, I played basketball, baseball and soccer, but my affinity for tennis reigned supreme, and my similar style of play led me to emulate only one player. Key word: style. Edberg was the number one player in the world at the time and my marginally developed serve and volley game was nothing like that of Sweden’s second-most famous tennis star. In fact, it was so mediocre I illegally played down in age to gain a much-needed advantage. My parents were ecstatic to find out their only son fabricated his USTA application without any hesitation or remorse.

Note: In my defense, the USTA’s age rules and requirements were beyond ridiculous back then. My birthday is Dec. 29. Therefore, I turned 14 with two days left in the year. And yet, they wouldn’t let me play U14s, which I clearly needed to do. Anyone who saw me and my oversized Wilson ProStaff 5.5si carried by a swift breeze to the net knew I didn’t belong in U16s. I weighed 102 pounds. Wet.

I served and volleyed, kept my eyes down when I walked back to the service line, and made every attempt to impersonate his grace on the court while trying to replace my intolerable John McEnroe-style temper. I willed myself to grow exactly 6 feet 2 inches tall (until I became 6’3” the next month), faked a horrible northern European accent when talking to myself at the hitting wall near my childhood home, and used my newspaper delivery money to purchase the Stefan Edberg signature Adidas tennis shoe.

Okay, I didn’t. I bought the Edberg replicas. The tongue did not boast his signature and I played it off with the best of my ability to anyone who cared. But they were Adidas, and they were tennis shoes, and they almost looked identical to Stefan’s, so I wore them with pride and cleaned them daily with detergent.

This is what guys dream about when they’re kids. Well, I actually spent most of my time dreaming about Kathy Ireland once her celebrated Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover issue was released in 1989, but aside from that, I dreamed about being a professional athlete. Namely, Stefan Edberg—sans short white shorts, of course.

My nephews are no different. Keaton is seven and wants to be big Ben Roethlisberger. Jackson is four and wants to be University of Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi. If you have nephews, they probably want to be Derek Jeter, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, Cristiano Ronaldo or Roger Federer; it all depends on what type of ball they’re introduced to first.

For women it’s different. Girls do not typically grow up with the dream of one day being a professional athlete and the reasons are unambiguous: the same opportunities simply do not exist for women. Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain sparked a movement of athletic aspiration in teenage girls with their FIFA World Cup Victory in 1999, but without a legitimate professional soccer tour, allowing their new legions of fans to follow in their footsteps, Hamm and Chastain’s names quickly faded off the radar.

Standard rubrics apply for both men and women. There must be a consistent annual professional circuit for women, and not just one global tournament every four years. The Olympics and World Cup are not enough.

With that said, would Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh still be popular if the only two tournaments they had ever competed in were the ’04 and ’08 Olympic Games? Of course they would be. Two golds will do that. But not as much. Without a domestic pro tour each summer providing young fans opportunities to meet the girls, see the medals, get the autographs and witness the 112-match winning streaks, Misty and Kerri could have easily become the next Hamm and Chastain. And young women around the globe would have ultimately ceased aspiring to one day become a member of Team Golden Girls.

Even with an established professional tour each year, however, all is not well in the beach volleyball developmental pipeline. Right now, there simply isn’t a pipeline. The fact of the matter is girls do not grow up playing sand volleyball unless they live in Southern California. Throughout our history, indoor volleyball has been employed as the feeder program to build our nation’s beach elite. Yes, that’s right, indoor. A game played by six players on each side. A game that requires intense specialization of individual skill sets by each participant. And a game that is played on a hard wood floor.

Why on earth is beach volleyball generating its players from an alternate version of the sport that uses six players per side instead of two? Correct me if I’m wrong but basketball isn’t played in high school and college gymnasiums with five players per team, only to progress to a pro game played on the street using three. Putting that sentence together formulated perspective I believe is being ignored by volleyball players across the board. Can you imagine a three-on-three NBA played on the street? I take that back. It’s not perspective, it’s lunacy. And we’ve been using that model for survival since well before the AVP was established in 1983. Our players come from the gym, then spend years attempting to perfect an entirely new discipline of the sport. This explains why the average age of both men and women playing beach volleyball in the United States is well over 30.

Girls want to be Kerri Walsh. Few would debate this. Walsh is not only an athletic phenomenon, she’s a global brand. Just this week, news of her second pregnancy locked her in at number six on Yahoo’s Web Pulse for most-searched topics on the internet. Yes, that’s right, her pregnancy. She’s not even competing right now. But when she does return, when she does compete, she will have only one goal in mind: to win an unprecedented third Olympic gold medal. And until she comes back, Walsh continues to be one of the game's greatest ambassadors, taking time out of her busy schedule to speak on behalf of the collegiate sand volleyball bid.

Like Walsh says, the goal now is to establish a system for young female athletes that will one day allow them to follow in beach volleyball stars' footsteps. And fortunately, that system starts at a place I’ve visited before: the addition of NCAA sand volleyball. If you’re unfamiliar with the facts and don’t know what’s about to go down in Atlanta this January, click here.

But the necessary pipeline I’m referring to doesn’t culminate with a successful vote at the NCAA convention. Young women across the country want to try their hand at beach volleyball well before they enroll at their local institution of higher learning and unfortunately, there’s currently no platform for girls to do so outside Southern California and bits of Florida.

Take former Long Beach State University volleyball player Chelsea Rashoff, for instance. Rashoff grew up in the small Northern Californian town of Danville, just east of Oakland. She attended Monte Vista High and played under Coach Andy Schroder. The only time she ever played sand volleyball was after indoor practice, in a park across the street from the school. The net was “crappy,” the sand quality far from anything found kissing the Pacific Ocean 90 minutes south at Capitola State Beach, but that didn’t stop her from immediately loving every second she spent on the park’s lone court.

Would the addition of NCAA sand volleyball have influenced her decision to attend a certain college? You bet. “I would have chosen a school based solely on where I wanted to play beach,” Rashoff responded with vigor. “It is something I dreamt of as a little girl, with posters of Misty and Kerri all over my wall.”

Chelsea Rashoff with Misty May-Treanor

Injuries cut Rashoff’s indoor career short, but she swears it had more to do with her “burning passion for beach volleyball” dragging her to the coast than anything. Rashoff, currently just a sophomore, also stated she’d “instantly return to play for LBSU if sand [volleyball] passed in the NCAA.” With a successful vote against the override in January, she’ll have her wish. Long Beach State is 100 percent in favor of adding sand volleyball.

A system providing a path to the top, Rashoff stated, would be an instant success once word gets out and girls across the nation are informed of their opportunities, especially if collegiate sand scholarships become available.

So, what is this system? And how is the AVP going to make it easier for girls everywhere to pursue their dreams of one day becoming the next Golden Girl, without being limited indoors with five of their closest friends? Check back tomorrow on AVP.com for the announcement.