Travis Mewhirter releases new beach volleyball book: We Were Kings

Travis Mewhirter releases new beach volleyball book: We Were Kings

Travis Mewhirter published his book, We Were Kings, on December 5. You can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble!

I’ll always remember the first interview. It was September of 2016. I was sitting on my bed in my studio in Newport Beach. That bed also doubled as my office, seeing as my apartment was roughly 600 square feet and had room for a bed, kitchen, and TV, all within arm’s length of each other. On the other end of the phone was Tri Bourne – Tri Bourne! The guy I watched roof John Mayer on match point of the 2015 AVP Huntington Beach Open on the first weekend I had moved to California. The guy I had dug deep into YouTube to watch virtually every snippet of film I could find. That Tri Bourne.

And for an hour and a half, Tri talked about whatever it was that I wanted to talk about.

You’re writing a book? Cool. What’s it on?

It was a great question at the time, and it remained a great question over the next two years. The umbrella topic was easy enough: It was on beach volleyball. It was on beach volleyball because, when I had first picked up the game at a bar in Florida called Juana’s Pagodas, I had done what all good nerds do when assuming a new hobby: I went to Amazon and ordered every piece of literature I could on the topic.

Which was nothing. There were drill books, sure, and instructional stuff. But I wanted to know about the game. I wanted its history, in all its rich detail. I wanted to know the players, the people, the events. I wanted to know everything.

Only, in book form, there wasn’t much of anything to know. So my second interview was with a man named Kevin Cleary. My good friend, John Braunstein, set it up in a way. I told him I was working on writing a book o beach volleyball, and he told me Cleary was a guy I needed to talk to. So I sent Cleary a message on Facebook, waited a month or two for a reply, and when he did, we decided to play a AA CBVA in Manhattan Beach together. It wound up being an all-day affair, Cleary regaling me tales of beach volleyball’s past, how he became the AVP’s first president, how the AVP was formed in protest of rule changes, how things were done in the old-school days.

Slowly, I began picking the contact lists of Bourne and Cleary. From Bourne’s list, I was digging into the modern player; from Cleary’s, the first generation of professionals. In a single week, I’d speak to Sinjin Smith and Carl Henkel, the 1996 Olympic team and the cause of so much unnecessary controversy, and also Riley and Maddison McKibbin. I’d talk to Karch Kiraly and Tim Hovland, followed up by Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb – the legends of past and present.

Within a year, I had interviewed more than 100 players across various generations of beach volleyball, and when I sat down to look over the roughly 800 pages of notes, I still had absolutely no clue where to begin or what, exactly, I was doing with all of this information, which was pure, untainted beach volleyball gold.

Becoming a player helped clarify that.

To be clear, my name, in the context of playing beach volleyball, should not be mentioned in the same sentence as men like Bourne, Patterson, Gibb, Dalhausser, Lucena, all of whom have enormous roles in the book. But becoming a player, experiencing the wondrous grind of working up the ranks in beach volleyball as it stands today, illuminated exactly the project I wanted to publish: Why in the world do people spend so much time, energy and money and sacrifice so much of themselves to play beach volleyball?

Financially, it makes no sense. The term fiscal responsibility is a paradox when spoken of in the realm of beach volleyball. In the mid-to-later playing days of Kiraly, Dodd, Smith, Stoklos – all the names you’ll see in the CBVA Hall of Fame – it wasn’t so incomprehensible, to be financially stable and a beach volleyball player. They could gross half a million in a single year.

But over the years, with the AVP changing hands so frequently, from Leonard Armato to Jeff Dankworth to Jerry Solomon to Armato to Donald Sun with various hedge funds and financial institutions subbing intermittently in between, the game has struggled to find a firm footing. As such, it’s struggled to provide the type of consistency that its athletes could live off of, all of which served to create two fascinating questions for me: How do men even stumble into this game, and why do they continue to do it?

I sent my first manuscript, a 120,000-word monster of a thing, to my wizard editor lady, Ann Maynard, who has overseen a number of New York Times bestsellers. The content was great, she said, and the stories captivating. But I covered too much ground too fast. She felt like she was in a literary drag race that was at once exhilarating and severely confusing. She gave me two options: Pick half the book and focus only on that, repurposing the other material for blogs, stories, magazines, whatever. Or just split the book in two – one digging into the modern player, the other detailing beach volleyball’s ascent to becoming an Olympic sport.

It made sense to publish the former option first, seeing as the information was going to be dated very quickly, while the latter, being historical, has no expiration date or need for expediency. So the next year, that’s what I set out to do, separating the information, outlining, outlining again, outlining one more time, then another, before sending it to Ann.

We settled on a structure, with each chapter being a stop in the 2016 season, each stop digging into a different facet of the game – the difficulty of qualifying, the difficulty of qualifying enough to be a consistent main draw player, the difficulty of sustaining being a main draw player while also holding enough side jobs to stay afloat, the difficulty of sustaining being a main draw player while also holding enough side jobs to stay afloat while also attempting to raise a family. Each chapter adds another layer, another dynamic of this game that, to me, is nothing short of fascinating.

Throughout, you’ll read the stories of men who are at the top and the bottom, of the Dalhaussers of the world and the Chris Luerses – the legends and the constant qualifiers. You’ll read about men who have made it and men who are still trying and might never actually do it. And you’ll read about why – why they continue going for it, despite so much suggesting they should do otherwise, why they love the game that so rarely loves them back in any tangible way.

Why they continue to push for just one more day at the beach.

Jaksot(500)

Evan Cory: Adapting, Adjusting, THRIVING In 2025

Evan Cory: Adapting, Adjusting, THRIVING In 2025

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter features Evan Cory, one of the best players in the United States who alas had his plans aligned, with a full-time partner in Bourne, sites on the AVP League and World Champs -- everything dialed. And then beach volleyball happened. Bourne got hurt. They missed the League. Now Cory is, per usual, scrambling -- and thriving amidst the chaos. Fun episode with one of our favorites. We chat about: - What is was like for Cory to miss the league with Tri Bourne - How he has adjusted, leaning on patience, patience, and more patience, and adaptability, after he thought he broke through - His new partner prospects he's looking at - The importance of the mental side of sports, and how he is teaching it to junior players with his new business And so much more. Gold mine of an episode here! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

16 Heinä 20251h 16min

Kent Steffes: What Beach Volleyball (and sports) is Getting Wrong And How to Fix It

Kent Steffes: What Beach Volleyball (and sports) is Getting Wrong And How to Fix It

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Kent Steffes. Buckle up. Steffes is one of the greatest beach volleyball players of all time, an Olympic gold medalist in 1996 who would win nearly half of the events he played. He has since gone on to become a prolific writer, author, podcaster, and, now, documentarian. He has opinions on the sport, and sports in general, and we get into all of them, including: Why Steffes does not believe the AVP League will work What changes he sees the sport needing to make in order to work Why he writes and podcasts as much as he does, on the topics he does Whether beach volleyball will ever become as big as it was in the 1990s, when he was at his peak And so much more. Get your popcorn ready and strap in. This one is a fun ride. SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

9 Heinä 20251h 32min

Kylie DeBerg: The Wild Journey From Iowa to the Top of Professional Beach Volleyball

Kylie DeBerg: The Wild Journey From Iowa to the Top of Professional Beach Volleyball

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Kylie DeBerg, one of the top rising blockers for USA Volleyball who is coming off a gold medal at the Xiamen Challenge with Toni Rodriguez. DeBerg’s journey in the sport is a wild one, beginning in Hudson, a tiny town in Iowa with a population of 2,700, to…beach volleyball. How? They got into it and much more, including: DeBerg’s rise through the indoor world, and how she ended up a three-time All-American at Missouri How a season at LSU changed her look on volleyball, and forever changed the trajectory and path of her life The confidence issues that come with attempting to break through the top level in sport Why she’s focused on the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, and why that’s still so crazy for her to say And much, much more. Fun to have Kylie DeBerg on the show for the first time! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

2 Heinä 202551min

Taylor Crabb, Taylor Sander: The Ever-Changing Lives and Careers of a Volleyball Player

Taylor Crabb, Taylor Sander: The Ever-Changing Lives and Careers of a Volleyball Player

This episode of SANDCAST features Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander as they sit down with Tri Bourne, chatting Sander's return from indoor, Crabb's off-season getting into coaching NCAA Beach Volleyball, and them playing together again in 2025. They get into: How Taylor Sander’s return to indoor volleyball in Indonesia went, and why he feels three years younger after playing beach volleyball How Taylor Crabb got into NCAA Beach Volleyball coaching at St. Mary’s, and why he’s going back for a second year Why Taylor Crabb and Trevor Crabb are reuniting on the Beach Pro Tour Why their lack of training is really no hindrance at all, because they’re volleyball players SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

25 Kesä 20251h 2min

Rob Gray: Unlocking Athlete Potential Through Ecological Dynamics

Rob Gray: Unlocking Athlete Potential Through Ecological Dynamics

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Rob Gray, a skill acquisition specialist, professor at Arizona State, sport scientist with the Chicago Cubs, and, simply, the father of the modern coaching movement in sports. His books, podcast, and research have formed the foundation of thousands of coaches’ coaching philosophy, including Mewhirter’s. What a special episode! They chat about: What is ecological dynamics, and what makes it so effective for learning Why the old way of coaching (top-down, repetition-based) is giving way to the modern, ecological way espoused by Gray External vs. internal cues, and why the former is vastly more effective than the latter What the world has gotten wrong with the famous 10,000-hour rule And so, so, so much more. SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

18 Kesä 202549min

Stefan Boermans: The World Class Ambassador Beach Volleyball Most Needed

Stefan Boermans: The World Class Ambassador Beach Volleyball Most Needed

Welcome back to SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter where, today, Travis sits down with Stefan Boermans at a restaurant in Ostrava, Czech Republic at the Ostrava Elite. Boermans is currently one of the top blockers in the world, and one of the top teams alongside Yorick de Groot, a tour de force for a deepening Netherlands federation. On this episode, they chat about: How Stefan Boermans’ social media exploded, and why he views that as his tool to be an ambassador to grow the sport His rapid rise through the sport after a late start, and how he was shocked that the Dutch federation picked him to make a run at the Paris Olympics Why, even after a fifth, Stefan Boermans has no regrets whatsoever about his Olympic experience, preparation, and performance His thoughts on the new rules changes in beach volleyball that will allow doubles and coaches in the box And a whole lot more. So, so, so good! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

11 Kesä 20251h 6min

Nick Lucena, Brooke Niles, And The Building of An NCAA Coaching Legacy

Nick Lucena, Brooke Niles, And The Building of An NCAA Coaching Legacy

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Nick Lucena and Brooke Niles and the entire FSU Beach Volleyball coaching staff as they reflect on another successful season for the 'Noles. They chat about: - How Brooke Niles and Nick Lucena have managed the husband-wife, coach-coach balance at Florida State - Both of their transitions from elite beach volleyball players to coaches at the NCAA level - How Brooke Niles has seen the landscape of coaching and college sports change - What Travis Mewhirter's first year was like at FSU And a whole lot more! SHOOTS! WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

4 Kesä 20251h 11min

Alvaro Filho, Cesar Benatti: A Deep Dive Into Brazilian Beach Greatness

Alvaro Filho, Cesar Benatti: A Deep Dive Into Brazilian Beach Greatness

This episode of SANDCAST features Alvaro Filho, one of the most recent Brazilian greats who is now an assistant at Stetson, and Cesar Benatti, a longtime coach who was most recently an assistant at LMU with John Mayer. This is SUCH A GOOD EPISODE, as we chat about all things Brazilian beach volleyball, including: Why Alvaro views Emanuel Rego as one of the best players to ever play What made Alison Cerutt such an incredible partner What Benatti’s three pillars are as a coach when designing an effective practice How parenting has impacted their playing and coaching careers, and how coaching has changed their lens as a parent And so, so much more. Just absolute gold all over this one. SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

28 Touko 20251h 17min

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