Hernández with ambitious plan in PUR Beach Volleyball 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, January 31, 2021 - After a successful time as a player in the world sands, as well as on the courts, added to his success as a coach, Ramón 'Monchito' Hernández will be in charge of an ambitious plan working in beach volleyball in Puerto Rico. 

Hernández was announced over the weekend as the new director of the national federative beach volleyball program and his goals are clear in the short and long term. 

“I will be in charge of the program, at the same time I will be the coach of the adult men's and women's teams. In the plan, an ambitious project was presented for the national teams, as well as to expand the national circuit in adults and youth”, Hernández told PV MEDIA SPORTS. 

The also athletic director of the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico arrives at a time when the crisis of the pandemic has stopped the sport worldwide, but being the open-air beach, it begins to become more flexible with the announcement of tournaments in different parts of the world and Puerto Rico could follow that trend. 

"I think it is a good time for the development of what would be a tournament for adults and juniors, logically as the situation allows us. But the first part of the project is to reactivate the circuit as a solid one and to help the program”, said Hernández. 

Hernández's working group will have the coach, Marcos Lliendo, as assistant and technical support for the youth teams, while Alexis Feliciano remains in the program as coordinator of the youth plan and in charge of programming youth tournaments. Joining them will be Jeffrey Fraticelli as a physical trainer. 

The history of beach volleyball has been full of great moments. Puerto Rico was one of the five countries that hosted the first world circuit of the International Volleyball Federation in 1986, it was represented in the Central American and Pan American debut of the modality in 1998 and 1999, respectively. In 2002 with Hernández together Raúl Papaleo achieved a historic gold medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games in El Salvador, the following year the pair obtained the bronze medal at the Pan American Games in Santo Domingo and in 2004 they qualified for the Games Olympics in Athens. 

Hernández assured that the plan is an ambitious one to achieve great objectives of returning to the Olympic Games in one or two cycles, “We want to return to the Olympics, achieve gold again in some Central Americans and place our pairs in the best five of the Pan American Games. The goal is ambitious, but we will work towards that”, he told PV MEDIA SPORTS. 

Although to date there are no events announced in the Norceca area, the beach training group will seek to begin their training sessions in the coming weeks. 

Work is being done to make the Carolina spa facilities the training center.