Eric Hammond joined the men's beach volleyball program in August of 2022 to help launch its inaugural season. He remains an assistant coach with the women's beach team as well. As head coach of the men's team in 2022, he led the Mustangs to a 7-2 overall record in their inaugural season. As an assistant coach to the women's squad, he assisted Head Coach Trumbo to a 26-7 record, as the team finished third at the 2023 DIII AVCA National Championship.
Hammond joined the Mustangs women's beach volleyball program as an assistant coach in late 2021. Hammond helped guide the team to the 2022 DIII AVCA National Championship.
Hammond now has a full-time career in public relations, but is still extremely active in the beach volleyball world. He is currently the director of beach programs for Bay Area Volleyball Academy (BAVA) during the summers. He has also been BAVA's head beach coach since 2016. During his tenure, the juniors training program has grown from nine players to more than 60, and has earned multiple bids to national championships.
Since 2012, Hammond has worked for USA Volleyball’s (USAV) Beach High Performance (now rebranded as National Team Development Program) pipeline with males and females in several age groups. He has served as a coach for tournaments and camps, and an evaluator for tryouts. Hammond has worked USAV Beach camps around the country, including the world-class Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif. He was a training and tournament coach for the USA U17 Boys A2 team at the USAV High Performance Championships in Hermosa Beach and Santa Monica, Calif. in 2015, and returned to Hermosa to coach the USA U19 Women's A2 team in 2016. In 2019, he coached the USA U19, U17 and U15 Boys A2 teams in Cartersville, Ga. In 2020, he was selected as the head coach for the USA U15 A2 Girls team set to convene in Tavares, Fla., but that training was canceled due to the pandemic.
Hammond also spent 12 years coaching NCAA indoor women’s collegiate volleyball at the Division I level.
Over eight years as the top indoor assistant and, later, recruiting coordinator at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, he helped the Hawks post seven straight seasons of 20 or more wins, four undefeated conference regular seasons and six Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Northern Division regular season championships. UMES posted a 61-3 record in conference play during that run. Hammond played a major role in the 2011 and 2012 teams winning the MEAC Championship and earning the program’s only two berths in the NCAA Division I Tournament.
Hammond was the head beach volleyball coach and tournament director for the UMES Collegiate Sand Invitational in 2009. The Hawks won the event.
From 2013-2017, he was the top indoor assistant and recruiting coordinator at Towson University. During that time, the Tigers reached a top 75 ranking in NCAA Division I, earned several Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) conference individual honors, and a CAA regular season championship in 2015.
In the spring of 2017, Hammond was the head beach volleyball coach for the Tigers non-NCAA outdoor season. The unofficial beach season culminated in an undefeated 4-0 match record in the two-day Mustang Invitational hosted at Stevenson.
During this spring of 2019, he led the non-NCAA beach training for Loyola University Maryland's (NCAA Division I) indoor team competing unofficially in the sand. That season, too, finished at the Mustang Invitational.
Hammond is nationally certified by USA Volleyball in Beach Coaching Accreditation Program (BCAP) level 1, Increased Mastery and Professional Application of Coaching Theory (IMPACT) and SafeSport, and earned the Beach Coach Certification from The Art of Coaching.
He has worked as an editor and writer for multiple national volleyball magazines. For nearly a decade, he served as the conference representative on the American Volleyball Coaches Association's (AVCA) Assistant Coaches Committee for the MEAC and then the CAA, and was the founder and chair of the AVCA Assistant Coaches Publications subcommittee. Early in 2020, Hammond was elected to serve a two-year term as one of only two coach representatives nationally for USA Volleyball's Beach Assembly.
The Maryland native grew up playing beach volleyball in the Mid-Atlantic area. He graduated from Salisbury University and competed for their men’s indoor club volleyball team.
