Marshall University Athletics
Ex-Herd Defender Dombrowski Hits the Beach
4/6/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
By CHRIS DICKERSON
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - The first thing that pops into your head is, "What exactly is beach soccer?"
Yes, it's just what you are thinking. It's soccer on sand instead of grass.
But why?
And, more to the point, how?
"Well, it's pretty much soccer," says Jared Dombrowski, a former Marshall men's player who now is a member of the U.S. National Beach Soccer team. "Think of the differences between volleyball and beach volleyball ... same concept."
Dombrowski, who just returned from El Salvador - where he played in the Copa Pilsener for Team USA - said the dimensions of a beach soccer pitch are smaller than those for a grass pitch. And there are fewer players on the pitch.
"The field is 40 yards long and 30 yards wide," said Dombrowski, who teaches middle school just outside of Columbus, Ohio. "There are four players plus a goalkeeper on the field for each team."
Beach soccer is sanctioned by FIFA, the same international group that oversees most major soccer tournaments such as the World Cup. And while the goal still is to put the ball in the goal, he said a beach soccer game is quite different from one played on grass.
He describes it as "aerial."
"It requires a lot more skill," said Dombrowski, who also coaches Pre-Academy teams for the Columbus Crew Soccer Club. "The tactics are similar to indoor soccer because of the number of players and the dimensions.
"Shots are taken, I'd say, about every 30 seconds or so. We play three 12-minute periods, so it's very fast paced. But there are stoppages. It's very taxing on the body because you're running on sand.
"And, of course, it's harder to dribble. If you play a hard pass on sand, it's going to hit a mound or a peak and pop up on somebody. So, a lot of the passes are in the air. The game is very aerial. You do a lot of passing to the chest or thigh. There are a lot more acrobatics."
One way to illustrate that, he said, is the use of bicycle kicks.
"In regular soccer, a bicycle kick likely will end up being a foul on me because it likely is a dangerous play," Dombrowski said. "But in beach soccer, they actually cater to people doing bicycle kicks. They want it. If anything, there usually is usually a foul on the defense for getting in the way of a bicycle kick."
Another difference, he said, is that a player who is fouled is the one who has to take the penalty shot. That isn't the case in regular soccer.
"Plus, because the size of the field, just about everything is a shot on goal," said Dombrowski, adding a typical score for a beach soccer game is something like 7-5. "It's just a very exciting, very fun game to play."
During his career with the Thundering Herd, Dombrowski played in 73 matches from 2001-05, scoring six goals and eight assists with the Herd as a defender. He is listed as a midfielder for the U.S. Beach National Team.
"It's very exciting news to hear that Jared was able to make the national beach soccer team," Marshall Coach Bob Graysaid. "It's obviously a great honor for him to represent his country and it bodes well for Marshall to have a former athlete on the national team for such a prestigious tournament."
Still, the question remains ... How does a former Marshall soccer player who teaches eighth-grade social studies in Ohio end up on the U.S. National Beach Soccer team?
"They actually used to show it on TV quite a bit when I was younger," said Dombrowski, who is married with one son. "I always thought it was cool. After I graduated from Marshall, I saw something about it in a soccer magazine. There is a league around the Great Lakes.
"So, me and some other guys from the Columbus area got together and took a group up to Cleveland to play. And, it just gradually grew. That was back in 2009 or so when I started."
He said the core of that team has stayed together and plays about four tournaments a year, from the Great Lakes to Virginia Beach to Clearwater Beach, Fla. They've played in tournaments with the Costa Rican national team, and faced teams from Barcelona, Miami and Oregon.
And now, the 2006 Marshall graduate is on the U.S. National Team.
"It's one of these growing sports," Dombrowski said. "It's growing more around the world than it is here, but it is growing here. One of the goals is to get the sport into the Olympics. But, if you ask me, for it to be an Olympic sport you need to have women's teams, too. And, it hasn't really caught on with women yet.
"But as it continues to grow and catch on with women, I think you'll see it in the Olympics one day."
Other than Dombrowski and one player from Milwaukee, all of the other members of the U.S. National Team are from California, Miami and Hawaii.
"I just got back from playing in the Copa Pilsener," he said. `We lost all three games, but in the context of everything, it was good results for us.
"Portugal won the Beach Soccer World Cup last year. They beat us, 4-1, but it was 1-1 entering the final period. In 2014, they beat the U.S. team 14-1. We lost to El Salvador 4-2, and we lost to Argentina in a shootout. We lost all three, but it was good in terms of our development."
Chris Dickerson, a Marshall graduate and former sportswriter and city editor at two West Virginia daily newspapers, is editor of the West Virginia Record and an adjunct journalism professor at MU. This story first appeared in this week's issue of the Herd Insider magazine.
