Maddison McKibbin and the making of the Beard Bros

There is little that Phil Dalhausser has yet to accomplish in beach volleyball. He’s won more than 50 tournaments domestically and another 30-plus internationally. He’s won an Olympic gold medal and owns the longest active win streak on the FIVB Tour, having won a tournament in each of the past 12 years. But the 37-year-old Dalhausser isn’t finished. Not yet. He has a Defensive Player of the Year to win. Just kidding. Maybe. You’ll recall that Dalhausser did make the finals in the AVP’s season finale in Chicago split-blocking with Nick Lucena, and the one award that the Thin Beast has yet to win in his lavishly long list of awards is a Defensive Player of the Year. “If I could play with Evandro [of Brazil], we could just sit back and bomb serves and whatever, if we dig a ball it’s a bonus,” Dalhausser said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “And playing behind Evandro would be a lot easier than playing behind Nick.” He’s joking, though it speaks to Dalhausser’s brilliant career that he is devoid of just one accolade, for a position he doesn’t play. He has no plans – “no shot” – to split-block (Chicago is likely a one-time ordeal), for Dalhausser does indeed still have mountains to climb. He wants a World Championship. He wants another Olympic gold in Tokyo 2020. But first, he’s bidding farewell to California. Dalhausser and his family are packing up and moving to Orlando, just a few hours from Lucena in Tallahassee. “It’s a little bit of risk as far as volleyball goes,” he said on SANDCAST. “There will definitely be a transition.” A transition back to their roots. Dalhausser and Lucena have been close for more than a decade, having met playing against one another in Florida, when Dalhausser was at Central Florida and Lucena at Florida State. Their respective journeys have taken them from northwest Florida to South Carolina to Southern California and now, for the final act of their decorated careers, back home. “I’d like to grab the 2019 World Champs and 2020 Olympic gold,” Dalhausser said. “That’s the goal. We’ll see what happens.”

20 Joulu 20171h 16min

Geena Urango didn’t expect to be playing on the AVP Tour. After playing volleyball for five years at USC – four indoors, one on the beach – Urango, who studied digital marketing, was just stoked to have a job: Interning with the AVP Tour. “My first day on the job I get called into Donald [Sun’s] office just to do a little meet and greet,” Urango recalled on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “He’s like ‘Yeah, so you’re going to play too, right?’ And I was like ‘What?’ I didn’t even know that was an option. “Just that one sentence sparked it.” That question was both a blessing and a burden for Sun, who was able to retain Urango for a year and a half before Urango ultimately realized that she still had a passion for the game, to the point that she quit her job with the AVP to focus full-time on her career as a player. Her decision has proved to be prescient. Since concentrating on beach – she still freelances as a marketer – Urango has become one of the top defenders on the AVP Tour, making four finals over the course of the 2015, ’16, and ’17 seasons with partner Angela Bensend. It was a partnership that began on a last-minute scramble prior to the 2015 Manhattan Beach Open and has since become one of the most recognizable on Tour, both for their play, their nickname – “TexMex” – and garish bikinis, kudos of Goldsheep.   “Benny and I, what was great about playing together, we were always on the same page, what our goals were for the season,” Urango said. “Each season we progressively got better and better, so it was ‘Why break what’s not broken?’ We had a great balance. She was fiery and brought a lot of energy and I was more calm and collected.” Bensend, however, has since moved to Philadelphia, and with a balky back her future on the beach is uncertain, leaving Urango one of the more talented free agents on Tour. For now, Urango is content traveling the world, snowboarding, spoiling her dogs. Find our full show notes at VolleyballMag.com.

13 Joulu 201753min

The cat’s out of the bag: April Ross is playing with Alix Klineman, a 6-foot-5 blocker out of Stanford. On paper, the two will be a formidable pair, Ross one of the best defenders in the world, Klineman a standout indoor blocker who has an AVP final and a third under her belt. One problem: Klineman has just one year of full-time beach experience. The road to Tokyo 2020 will not be easy, though as Ross says on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “it’s not supposed to be easy.” “What is the meaning if what you’re doing if you’re not being challenged?” she says. “If you don’t have these things that will help you grow and things to help you overcome, what’s the point?” On Part Two, Ross discusses the path ahead, the inevitable challenges ahead, her mindset moving forward, as well as pairing up with former partner Jen Kessy, who will be coaching Ross-Klineman through Tokyo, site of the 2020 Olympic Games. Ross and Kessy, of course, are one of the best teams in American beach volleyball history, medaling in 17 out of 20 FIVB tournaments in a stretch from 2008-2010, finishing with a silver medal in the 2012 Olympic Games in London, where they lost to Kerri Walsh and Misty May. Few, if any, in the game know Ross’ style better than Kessy. “One of the things I learned the importance of,” she said, “is building a like-minded team around yourself: having the same mentality, the same goals, the same work ethic are all really important. Alix and I don’t know each other very well but it’s funny how connected we feel.” The first glimpse the beach volleyball world will have of Ross-Klineman will be in The Hague on January 3, where Ross, who has won 21 international tournaments, will likely be in a country quota. “We’re training every day,” Ross said. “Doing everything we can to get better every day.”

6 Joulu 20171h 1min

There has only ever seemed to be one gear for April Ross: Go. Such is how the Newport Beach native has garnered a laundry list of accomplishments that include, among others: A Gatorade National Player of the Year award at Newport Harbor High School; two national championships at USC (where she never even planned on playing, but more on that in Part 2); a two-year stretch with partner Jen Kessey between 2008-2010 in which she medaled in 17 of 20 FIVB events; an undefeated AVP season in 2014 with Kerri Walsh-Jennings; two Olympics medals, one silver, one bronze. And every time Ross thinks it’s time to unwind, to relax – well, there’s always another mountain to climb. “It’s so hard. It’s so hard. What I find happens is I convince myself to find that balance a little bit and not stress about it and not work so hard,” she said. “And then I’ll go to a competition, underperform, and I’m like ‘F this! I’m going to home, step it up. I’m not training hard enough, not focused hard enough. If you just want to win that bad – it’s so hard to take a step back and find that balance.” This season was, as Ross describes it on SANDCAST, full of “hiccups.” A last-minute breakup with Walsh-Jennings, with whom Ross won a bronze medal in the 2016 Olympic Games, along with a toe injury that had more of an effect that she realized until she watched video of her approach, made for a mercurial year, though certainly not a bad one – not by most standards, anyway. Ross still won a pair of AVP tournaments, in Austin split-blocking with Whitney Pavlik, and in New York defending for Lauren Fendrick. She still made the World Championship finals in Vienna, pushing the 2016 Olympic gold medalists Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst to three sets. But one of those hiccups – having a constantly-changing partner situation – is resolved for 2018. In Alix Klineman, the 2017 AVP Rookie of the Year, Ross has partner stability once more. “It was really hard to figure out what to do,” Ross said. “There weren’t many chances to compete and to try people out. It came down to really intangible things. I decided to go with Alix Klineman to take a shot at Tokyo.”

29 Marras 201750min