Draft Prospect Profile: MB Beau Vanderlaan
Vanderlaan has a legit claim to be the Ivy League's best player and has her eyes on a pro career.
From the moment Vanderlaan stepped on the court for Brown volleyball as a freshman, she has been one of the most dominant forces in the conference. With a motor that runs hot and the skills to back up her determination to be a weapon for her team, she’s had a remarkable career that culminated in breaking the school record for hitting percentage last year. There’s no sign of slowing down as she enters her final year of college eligibility.
Naturally, that kind of success brings heaps of praise.
“You know, she’s just one of those people that has really captured the attention of her team and the league and now even beyond that. It takes a really special person to manage that type of attention while still keeping the respect of their teammates and working as hard as she does,” said Brown head coach Taylor Virtue. “I tell her all the time, ‘You’re the most scouted volleyball player in the Ivy League. You can’t help but be noticed.’ It’s just a part of who she’s become over the last three seasons.”
Teams who come up against the Brown Bears have good reason to put a little extra time into planning for Vanderlaan. As a middle, she takes a secondary role in the team offense, but the Bears gave her the ball 495 time in 2023. In those chances, she landed 246 hits for kills and had an error rate of just 9.49 percent. She has the ability to hit a missile when she wants to, but she’s also unafraid to get in her bag with a gentler touch when the moment calls for it. Vanderlaan attributes much of her success to a willingness to mix things up.
“I like to hit the ball hard, but you don’t always need to hit, hit, hit it. You have to become unpredictable and you can’t revert back to your same old hits and your same bread and butter, because everyone knows what your bread and butter is. I think it’s about adapting to what you see in real time, which is what we’ve worked on a lot on years past, and adding more tools to my toolbox. There’s other things than just banging the ball,” said Vanderlaan.
Virtue was overflowing with kind works about the nuance that her star brings on the offensive side of the ball.
“She’s an M1, which means she’s in the front row with the setter more often than not, and so she does something which is pretty unique to M1’s, which is hit the slide. It’s the most efficient attack in volleyball. She’s very, very good at it and it takes- middles who are really good at this are few and far between,” explained Virtue.
A little later in our conversation, Virtue seized another opportunity to go into detail about what Vanderlaan does so well.
“She’s one of those attackers that, although speed is a big piece of her game, she’s really good at recognizing situations she’s in, whether they’re good or bad situations, and then making good decisions based on that. And I think that her freshman year, although she had natural ability, we didn’t really hone in on it until later in her career, so that’s certainly been a piece of the growth that she’s had,” said Virtue with a grin. “She’s really, really spatially aware and court aware and again, that’s pretty elite.”
Vanderlaan credits her background as an outside hitter for her court awareness, which she says sets her apart from other middles.
“If I just hit a ball at the 12-foot line, the defender is gonna take a step up and be prepared to dig that ball, so how can I hit that ball into the deep corner and throw them off a little bit, make them think a little more? And maybe I’ll tip a ball short, and the libero comes up a foot because she knows I tipped the ball short, then you tip the ball deep. You just kinda mess with their heads and keep thinking a step ahead of the game,” said Vanderlaan.
The honors have piled high for Vanderlaan as she’s terrorized defenses year over year. Voters unanimously named her the Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2021 and has landed on the All-League First Team each year of her career. She was even named an AVCA All-Region Honorable Mention in 2022, which is no small feat for an Ivy Leaguer. This hasn’t always felt like destiny for Vanderlaan, though.
“I kinda struggled at first because I felt like I set such a high standard in my first year. I was like, ‘How am I possibly gonna beat that? Did I peak? Did I reach my ceiling?’ So, I really struggled with that my sophomore year. I ended up competing more with myself than I did with the other players. I was so focused on individual stats, like, ‘I have to be better next year!’ that I was so single-minded, and it prevented me from seeing the whole team aspect of it,” she said.
Figuring out how to help Vanderlaan grow as a player presented a challenge for the Bears’ coaching staff as well. For Coach Virtue, who sees Vanderlaan as the best middle both on her team and in the conference, there aren’t too many opportunities to throw her up against a challenge that she’ll struggle to overcome and let iron sharpen iron. Virtue went into some detail, saying this:
“One of the things that we’ve done is, our assistant coach, Rob, he played men’s volleyball in college and played at a pretty high level. He plays against Beau a lot and he becomes one of the people that’s going to challenge her. We’ve created some drills where Beau has to score in really specific ways or she has to create specific situations for herself in order to score. It’s not just a matter of going out there and being more physical than the people out there, because she already does that. We have to get really specific with the ways that she needs to improve. Beau’s done a really good job of taking that on and figuring out how can she challenge herself in practice and in small group training sessions outside of going and doing what she does on gameday.”
For a savvy scorer like Vanderlaan, it probably comes as no surprise that the things she needs to clean up in her senior campaign come on the defensive side of things. She’s been capable enough as a front row blocker at her current level of competition, but she’s playing against future doctors and data analysts. Things will get a lot tougher when she’s facing off against the likes of Betty de la Cruz, Claire Chaussee, or Temi Thomas-Ailara.
“Keeping up as a middle blocker is really demanding and so we’ve been working a ton on Beau getting better, specifically, going to her left. She’s really good going to her right as a blocker, and does a good job diving in and taking away space from outside hitters, but the best attackers are often right sides and so Beau going to block right sides has really been a main focus for us. Just getting creative with some of the ways that she’s using her eyework and her footwork to be able to really accomplish that at a high level is where a lot of our focus has been,” explained Virtue.
Additionally, while technique can be improved, there’s almost nothing to be done about the fact that Vanderlaan stands at just 6’1, which is smaller than the prototypical middle. There’s been a deemphasis on size across nearly every sport during the last decade, but even so, there will be teams who aren’t interested in giving playing time to a middle who doesn’t provide a little more verticality.
“I am undersized compared to the girls who will for sure enter the draft out of the P5 schools, and when we play some of those schools, it’s apparent that those girls are insanely huge,” said Vanderlaan with a chuckle.
The PVF - who follows her on socials, for what it’s worth - is expanding to a 50 player draft next year as the league adds an additional three teams. Last year, the drafted players were exclusively seniors or grad students, and for my money, Vanderlaan will be among the best 50 players in that demographic when the draft rolls around again in December. She acknowledged that, as an Ivy League athlete, she’s not entirely sure how she compares to the national amateur talent pool. Nevertheless, she’s eager to take on the challenge of becoming a pro.
“I’ve always told my dad that I wanted to take volleyball as far as I could, as far as my body would let me, so I’d be open to it. I don’t really know what the next few years have ahead of me, but I think this league is growing tremendously and women’s sports as a whole are going to unknown and unseen places before and I think it would be really cool to be a part of that,” she said.
For her part, Virtue sees her best player as a future pro as well. She gave a remarkably straightforward summary of Vanderlaan’s prospects at the next level.
“I think she has the ability to be a third middle on a PVF team, if I’m being really honest. I don’t know that automatically she’s gonna be able to be a starter. I think she’s gonna hang offensively, she’s really dynamic, she’s really smart, she’s a great adjuster when it comes to good and bad situations, but the defensive side of things is gonna be the part that is her limitation,” said the Brown head coach. “So, as we kinda look at the landscape of the PVF and the leagues that are coming to the US, I think she’s gonna have some opportunities, and specifically to be a third middle on a team, but I doubt she’ll be a starter right away.”
That evaluation seems to hold water. It’s worth pointing out that she’s not a major factor in the service game either, which may also influence a coach to limit her playing time in a pro style 5-1 scheme that requires middles to serve.
With another college season standing between Vanderlaan and a professional opportunity, though, the goal has to be to lay down another eye-popping season’s worth of tape. She will be given all the opportunity in the world as the veteran face of Brown volleyball. You’d be hard pressed to find a better candidate for that role than the friendly, talented, and intelligent middle.
“I think that it’s so easy to brag about Beau. She’s absolutely the leader of our program, the face of our program,” said Virtue as our conversation came to a close. “She’s just one of those people who’s found her way in everything she’s ever done and so, yeah, she’s one of the best. One of the best I’ve ever coached and one of the best that will probably ever come through Brown.”
Some quotes were lightly altered for clarity. To read a full transcript of these interviews, click here. To watch a full Brown volleyball game, click here.