Albert “AL-B” Hannemann is a former UCLA and UH setter, Olympic Festival Gold medalist, U.S. Open beach champion, Hermosa Beach Open AVP champion, and managing director of the Beach Agency Group. Hannemann also played professional beach volleyball for 18 years and retired in 2010 to found the National Volleyball League (NVL).
Equally important for Hannemann, was the focus on the sport’s development and building a pipeline of future stars of the sport. This focus would lead junior athletes into college, professional tours, and ultimately the Olympics. With that vision he created and built the NVL Volleyball beach and indoor academy in Florida which is the country’s first and only beach and indoor volleyball full time school. A few highlights: NVL Academy has produced 14 division 1 college scholarship athletes in 5 years, 17U NVL Red qualified to USAV nationals in 2018, NVL Academy had finished each year with one or more teams finishing ranked in the top 10 teams in Florida, and Coach AL-B’s 16U Gold beat the #1 ranked team in country in the U.S. at the Big South National Qualifier in Atlanta. After 5 years and creating a successful business there he has recently returned back to the South Bay.
Hannemann said, “I am happy to be back home and looking forward to helping to continue to grow the sport with such a strong club like Surfside. I have been coaching indoor and beach for over 30 years and am honored to join such a great coaching staff.”
Hannemann invests a tremendous amount of energy promoting the sport to children across the country. In 2012, he founded the PlayFIT Foundation, with the mission to enhance the lives of young people across the United States by teaching the importance of proper nutrition and physical fitness to help create a better quality of life.