The sweet music of trainer Mykel Jenkins

I’ve always been one for mythology. I loved reading the tales of Zeus and Poseidon, Hades and Hermes, Athena and even those of the Norse orient, Thor and Loki and Odin. One of my favorites has always been the myth of the Phoenix, that stunning bird that never really dies. It burns, sometimes spectacularly in in a show of flames and combustion, sometimes in a simple and subtle decomposition. Either way, the end result is invariable: From its own ashes, it rises again. I think that’s beautiful. And so the beach volleyball world must do the same. This past week we, as a whole, as a single community with a single, beating heart, have been reduced to ashes. The death of Eric Zaun has impacted the entirety of the AVP and those well beyond. In Virginia Beach, there was a moment of silence before an AVP Next Gold Series. Folks from the snow volleyball world expressed their condolences. The FIVB, too. The Pottstown Rumble, site of one of Zaun’s most famous and epic and wonderful temper tantrums, will honor the kid who once took a red-eye after Seattle to play on zero sleep but put down no small amount of cash on a match anyway. Everywhere you look, the beach world is rising. It is rising in its own unique way. Donald Sun reached out to every player on the AVP, expressing his condolences, encouraging players to reach out of there was anything the AVP can do to help its own. To help them rise. We at SANDCAST are doing the same. We’re replaying Zaun’s episode this week. Maybe it will help some. Maybe it won’t. The hope is that it can provide, if just for one, that first stirring amid the ashes, that maybe it can begin to lay the foundation to the first step in recovering. Not moving on, no. But moving up. Onward. Rising. This is not a good thing that has happened but good will come of this. I am sure of it. I am sure of it because I’ve already seen it. I’ve seen it in such abundance in only a week that it’s a wonder, should this spirit, this Zaunian spirit of an unbridled zest for life and fun and mischief carry on, what incredible things could come of this. Already, Ed Ratledge is pondering how the beach community can make an award, the Eric Zaun Grinder Award. Something to do with the van, Zaun’s hysterical but wonderful abode for a few years. He doesn’t know just yet. He doesn’t have to. Point it: It will be something good. Something new. That, above all, is what I love so much about the myth of the Phoenix. It’s never created entirely new, but from the ashes of its predecessor. It never loses pieces of itself but instead uses them to grow into something brighter than its previous self. And so, at AVP Seattle, at Pottstown, the beach volleyball world recovers from the previous version of itself this week, and all those that will follow. This week, the community rises together.

19 Kesä 20191h 13min

It seems an idyllic existence, to be a professional beach volleyball player. Travel the world. Explore the planet’s most breathtaking beaches. See everything there is to see, both inland and coastal. Play in front of thousands of adoring fans. Sign autographs. Take pictures. Live the life Instagram would love you to have. That’s all true, yes. Tri Bourne gets to travel the world. He gets to explore the planet’s most breathtaking beaches, eat all the world’s best and unique foods. He gets to see everything there is to see. Including 2 a.m. in Jinjiang, China. A world away from his family, his pregnant wife, running on two hours of sleep per night for the previous few nights, having just spent the previous 45 hours on planes and buses and shuttles, crammed into spaces not made for abnormally large men who need to use their bodies to make a living. That, and Bourne’s body has been notoriously rebellious these past two years, with an autoimmune disease that has made traveling the world to play a sport with exceptionally high demands on the body that much more stressful. Most don’t recognize that side of the sport. Bourne, back full-time on the world tour for the first time since 2016, is again feeling its effects. “I was up at 2 multiple times,” he said of his time at the Jinjiang four-star, where he and Trevor Crabb finished fourth. “Dude, just freaking lay there. It’s brutal. We kept losing time. We kept going the same direction without going back, so we were going around the world and you had to adjust. So when we got used to it being 7 a.m., we had to adjust.” Adjusting is the name of the game for professional beach volleyball players. As Kerri Walsh Jennings said from Ostrava, the tournament following Jinjiang – where her and Brooke Sweat claimed their first gold medal as a team – “jet lag doesn’t discriminate.” Then she was off to the sauna to sweat out some of that jet lag. Which brings up the next aspect of life on the world tour: Staying fit and healthy, maintaining those lean bodies seen on livestreams and TV, is not the easiest of tasks. Hardly. “It’s difficult,” Bourne said. “A lot of times, we’re using our matches to get us into shape. These tournaments where we’re going seven matches in, you have two days of travel and then you need to recover from that travel, then you have a day or two before you play, so you don’t really have any time. “Our lifts were super jet lagged. We were just trying to open the body up because everything is super locked up from the plane. And when you haven’t gotten great sleep, you’re sore, you don’t want to push it, because that’s how you hurt yourself. There’s really not much lifting or practicing.” So they play. They play in Brazil and China and Czech and, hey, last week they even had the chance to play in the United States, for AVP New York! It wasn’t home, necessarily, but it was as close as it gets for life on the world tour. Everyone speaks English. The food is familiar. There’s family. Gyms. And now, after a quick stay, Bourne and the rest of the U.S. Olympic hopefuls are back on the road, to Warsaw, Poland. Some had to play a country quota, hardly a day to prepare for the cut-throat nature of the single-elimination format. Others will be in the qualifier. Everyone will be fighting the same, tired, thrilling, exhausted, rewarding, wonderful battle. “You watch some video, you’re playing,” Bourne said, “then you’re back to preparation.”

12 Kesä 201941min

Kim DiCello was never a bad teammate, same as she has never been a bad co-worker, a bad wife, a bad anything, really. But she did have her moments where “I was this intense, fierce competitor,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Not angry, but a little feisty. Without meaning to, I probably gave a couple stare-downs here and there, just having that fierceness, that edge.” She didn’t think it would change when her son, Luca, would be born. She’d still be the same person. Same interests. Same passions. Same competitive, feisty spirit. “After having the baby, oh my gosh, this flipped,” she said. “All of a sudden I have this softness, this sweetness, this tenderness that I had no idea was in me. I don’t think anything else could have pulled it out other than having a baby. All of a sudden there’s this gentleness, this patience, this calmness. “I firmly believe those qualities make me a better person and in being a better person I can leverage those to being a better teammate and an athlete and competing at a higher level. I think it’s going to require reworking and figuring out how these pieces all work together now.” The timing of DiCello’s words couldn’t be better. Her focus on being a teammate, in a sport that is often viewed as an individual pursuit, seems an anachronism. The women’s side, after just two AVP tournaments this season, has been shaken up and shuffled and thrown into a blender, spitting out dozens of new teams, products of former ones that weren’t entirely unsuccessful but left something to be desired. DiCello was one of them, having split, not by choice, with Katie Spieler after two finishes. Which isn’t to say that all of those breakups didn’t have their fair and justifiable reasons. Spieler, for instance, is going to Brittany Howard, a close friend and roommate, who became available after a split with Kelly Reeves, with whom she played for a year and a half. Howard, at 24 and still relatively new to the beach game, has all the upside in the world. It’s easy to see the logic behind Spieler’s move, just as it’s typically easier to see the logic behind any partnership move. DiCello just thinks that sometimes these moves come too quick, that beach is a world of instant gratification rather than longterm gains in terms of partnerships. “I really love the team dynamic in our sport,” DiCello said. “The value I get out of the experience of being on a team is so great, and it can be frustrating and challenging but I welcome those frustrations and challenges because through them you develop these really strong connections with the people you compete with. And I’m still really close with Lane [Carico] and Emily [Stockman] and Kendra [Van Zwieten], the partners I’ve competed with the last few years. “It’s a relationship that’s different from the relationships you’ll have with anyone else because you battle together and you’ve been through those good times and bad times and they’ve seen you at your best and they’ve seen you at your worst. “I want this in all areas in my life. I want to bring out the best in my husband. I want to bring out the best in my little boy. Doing it on the volleyball court is just another space where I get to do that.” It’s possible that this mindset is a large reason why DiCello has been able to succeed with such a variety of partners. With Carico, who is also a new mother, she finished 13th but also made four semifinals. With Stockman, she finished 17th but also made a final. With Van Zwieten, she finished ninth and fifth twice but also won her first AVP and made at least the semifinals in seven others. The lows often precede the highs, so long as you can stick it out long enough to see the final product.

5 Kesä 20191h 14min

Chris Geeter McGee isn’t technically involved in the sport of beach volleyball anymore. He’s passed on his metaphorical emceeing torch to Mark Schuermann. But he’s still a South Bay guy, still plays in all the four-man tournaments, still watches the livestream and keeps up with the sport he’s still fully, unquestionably enamored with. So when there was a NORCECA qualifier this past spring, after the Los Angeles Lakers, for whom he does a variety of media work, were knocked out of the playoff hunt, Geeter went to check it out, see the play and some of the players he still has relationships with. At the Manhattan Pier that day was Billy Kolinske, whom Geeter kinda sorta knew in the way that those in beach volleyball kinda sorta know everyone, even if they haven’t officially met. “He said ‘I watched in Chicago. You were a big part of why I wanted to play,’” Geeter recalled. “‘If I ever make a final, I need you to do an introduction.’” The legend of the Geeter introduction lives on. A bar in Louisville. Just a small, eight-team tournament. This is the first chapter of the genesis story of the indelible Geeter introduction. “I was sucking beers down, raging,” Geeter said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “And they were like ‘Go down!’ So I go down. My whole thing was that I’d break dance but I went down, I was doing these intros, and I was just screaming in [Larry Witt’s] face. Screaming in his face. At a bar in Louisville. And then it was just ‘You’re doing that every time.’” To say that he did that every time would be such an understatement it would be an insult to the wild and unprecedented creativity that Geeter brought to the sport of beach volleyball. Suck down beers and yell a few intros? Ha! That wouldn’t be it. No, sir. Geeter ziplined into a Manhattan Beach Open final. Nevermind that he didn’t know how to do it, or what he was doing, dammit he was going to zipline into a Manhattan Beach Open final! With a van filming from the next lane over, he went 80 on a Harley down the highway and straight onto stadium court. “I’ve never been on a Harley before, I’m losing my shit,” Geeter said. Driving that Harley was “a big lady. A Harley lady. Well, she was a woman. She was on the Harley and she said ‘Hold onto these handle bars.’ That was part of the TV intro.” One doesn’t write that script. They invent it as they go. Which is exactly what Geeter did in his iconic epoch with the AVP: He invented everything as he went. Given the keys to run the Dig Show, he put his wide spectrum of creative ideas to full use. Hiking in Hawai’i, barbeques, “doing all kinds of stuff,” Geeter said. And it wasn’t just a gimmick. It was real entertainment with a splash of bona fide journalism, a combination that earned five local Emmy nominations. “I’m 0-5,” Geeter said, laughing. It is funny, though, what preceded all that charm and pizzazz and charisma and panache: pure, unadulterated panic. The first time he was given the microphone, in 1998 or 1999, to do an introduction, he handed it back. And then it got handed right back to him. Whether he liked it or not, Geeter was doing introductions. “I would just start talking, so my intros started to evolve, and then it became part of the show. I’m on the sand, I’m getting people going, and then I’m just learning, so I would just try to get you. How do I get you? How do I get you?” Geeter said. “And then the women said you gotta give us that, so I had to get them going. I always wanted to make sure I gave everything I had.” His genuinely close relationships with the players not only made it easier to do them as well as he did, but more authentic. He’d throw in inside jokes that only a few people in a crowd of thousands would understand, but that was part of the beauty of it all: The introductions weren’t for the fans, they were for the players. He’d make up random stats on Todd Rogers digs just to get a chuckle out of Phil Dalhausser. The fans wouldn’t know the difference, but a laugh from the Thin Beast is worth more than an uproar from a sold-out Sunday stadium.    “I was a small part of it,” Geeter said. “I needed them. I helped facilitate everything, but it’s not like I was just running the show. The volleyball carried it. I just wanted to make it special. I wanted them to want to be there.” That goal has been well accomplished. Players who never had the opportunity to hear a Geeter intro – like Kolinske -- nostalgically seek them out. Even those outside of the beach world do, to the point that he is not infrequently requested to do wedding introductions – and then officiate those same weddings. He’s now officiated 17 weddings. His daughter sometimes asks him why he isn’t doing beach volleyball anymore. Like her dad, she’s a beach enthusiast, tuning into the Amazon livestream of all the AVPs, keeping up with the players. She doesn’t quite understand that “daddy’s with the Lakers,” Geeter said, laughing, and that working with the Lakers is quite a plush gig. But it’s a gig he fully admits he wouldn’t be as exceptional at had it not been for his fun-filled ride in beach volleyball. “I had no schooling for that,” he said. “I just learned on the go. I bet on myself. I can talk to you, I can go off the cuff. I learned how to do that from the AVP.”

29 Touko 20191h

It was, of all places, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where Corinne Quiggle discovered her ideal method of travel. It isn’t by car. Or Uber. Or ferry. Or train. Or plane. It is, instead, a tuk-tuk, a type of pulled rickshaw where most have three wheels. It’s how Quiggle and her partner, Amanda Dowdy, got around Cambodia for a two-star FIVB earlier this year. Maybe it’s the tuk-tuk, though it could just as easily be the memory that comes with the curious little vehicles: a silver medal on the FIVB Tour, Quiggle’s first in her young and burgeoning career. She did not travel, of course, to discover the novelty of a new means of getting from one place to the next, though it’s certainly a nice bonus. Traveling, not necessarily to see the world, but to experience life on the world tour, was Quiggle’s goal at the beginning of this season. Barely five months in, she’s replete with both experience and stories to tell. “It’s been my goal for as long as I’ve been in beach volleyball so I’m really just taking a good start on it,” Quiggle said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I have to grow points right now so that’s why we’re kicking it out as early as we can, just so we have a chance to get into those bigger tournaments.” It’s why Quiggle and Dowdy were amiss for the season-opener in Huntington Beach, and why they’ll likely miss a few more. The FIVB, for this season at least, is taking precedent. Rather than battle through a fully-loaded AVP Huntington, they flew to Malaysia for a three-star FIVB, claiming fifth out of the qualifier.   “It was a tough decision but for me it makes sense because if we want to get into these bigger tournaments down the rest of the year then we have to make that sacrifice,” Quiggle said. “There’s a ton of great teams so if we’re going to do it, then we have to put that above. We’re thinking ‘Hey we gotta do well in Malaysia so we can do well in those other tournaments.’” She’s viewing this season through the long lens. As in, a Hubble type distanced lens. She understands that to make it into Tokyo’s 2020 Games would be a bit of a stretch. That would be lovely if they made it, but she knows it’s far more reasonable to shoot for Paris in 2024 or Los Angeles in 2028. So she’s preparing now. She’s seeing the world, through tuk-tuks and planes and boats and hitched rides from random strangers in Cuba, while learning what life is like on the world tour. “This session of time is still a great learning period for me to know that this is what I have to do for 2024 and 2028,” Quiggle said. “We want to go and do as well as we can in these tournaments and if it doesn’t work out for 2020 I think it’s super important to go through that process. Knowing the process helps a lot.” An added bonus: In learning the process, Quiggle is enjoying one of her finest years yet. It makes sense, considering this is her first full-time year on tour, after competing for Pepperdine and graduating in 2018. Already, she has won her first FIVB medal, came home with another silver at a NORCECA in Mexico, taken a top-10 at AVP Austin.    “It takes me a little while, like, ‘This is crazy. I’m going to Mexico for a little while, and then in three days I’m going to Malaysia,’” Quiggle said. “And to have the opportunity to play in Huntington, and then in Austin, it’s amazing to know that we’re going to be in there. We’re getting into these tournaments, even a three-star, even a qualifier, we have the opportunity to get into those tournaments. “We’re balancing them out as we go. As it goes with the life of a beach volleyball player, we don’t know until like the week before. 21 days out we get alerted that we’re in but we still have to figure out all the little things.”

22 Touko 20191h 12min

You could have seen this path a long time ago, had you been paying close enough attention. When Nicole and Megan McNamara, identical twins from Vancouver, Canada, were on the same indoor team. One set, the other hit. Four others were on the court, sure, but “she would set me every ball,” Megan said, as the two broke out in fits of laughter. “And our coach was like ‘You gotta give other people some love.’” Not really, actually. There was beach, too. Nobody else to set. Nobody else to hit. Just the twins. Even in a quasi-team environment at UCLA, where they ushered in a new, small ball, fast movement offense that is becoming vogue in the college game, it was still just the McNamaras on court one. They could win and the Bruins could lose, or vice versa, which, Megan admitted, “is bizarre. It’s a bizarre feeling.” “You can win your match but then UCLA loses and you’re happy, then you’re bummed or vice versa,” Nicole said. “You’re all pissed about your loss but the team’s all stoked.” It was a bizarre and perfect four years in Westwood. Two National Championships. One of the most successful partnerships the game has seen in its nascent stages at the collegiate level. Now it’s back to their roots: Just the two of them. No scheduled practices with Stein Metzger and the crew. No team nutritionist or personal trainers or world class weight facilities. Just Megan and Nicole, taking on the world. That’s where they are right now, actually. Out in the world. Itapema, Brazil, specifically. Thousands of miles from home, whether that home be considered Vancouver or Westwood at this point. Recipients of the wild card, they’re straight into main draw, an excellent welcome to the tour gift from the FIVB, which is suddenly becoming replete with Canadians playing at a world-class level. Two different Canadian teams – Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan, Brandie Wilkerson and Heather Bansley – held the top spot in the world at one point last season. The McNamaras are already high enough in the world ranks that they’ve earned a spot in the World Championships during the last week of June and first of July, in Hamburg, Germany. “Our main goal for the summer was going to be to qualify for some of the bigger tournaments, and also to get settled with our new life in Toronto,” Nicole said. “Those were our main focuses so even qualifying for World Championships was amazing. We wouldn’t have expected that. If you would have told us that last year, we wouldn’t have believed you. It’s unbelievable.” What’s unbelievable now will be the standard soon enough. It would have been unbelievable, when they were freshmen Bruins, to conceive of a time when a school not named USC would win back-to-back national titles. Now that’s the new standard. It would have been unbelievable, when they were pre-teens, watching Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May Treanor, to conceive of a time when they’d not only be competing at their level, but pushing them. Now, after taking Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat to three in Mexico in October, that’s the new standard. So they’ll continue setting standards, blowing past expectations, making the unbelievable quite real quite regularly. And they’ll do so, as they’ve always done so, together.  “If it’s just the two of us out somewhere in the world we just need to lean on each other a little more,” Megan said. “I think that kind of helps because we were kind of cushioned at UCLA with all the support, and also knowing that our two through fives have our back. Knowing we’ve invested a lot of time, money, it helps us come together.”

15 Touko 20191h 1min

Let it sink in, if just for a second, that in a tournament where a pair of Sunday regular teams – John Hyden and Ryan Doherty, Reid Priddy and Theo Brunner -- were elsewhere in the world, Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena and Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb were in an elimination match for fifth. Six of the eight AVP tournaments in 2018 were won by either Dalhausser/Lucena or Gibb/Crabb. And they had to play one another, in the contender’s bracket, on a Saturday evening, for fifth. Meanwhile, the eight seed – Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb – had emerged unscathed from the upper half of the winner’s bracket, and the six – Casey Patterson and Chase Budinger – from the bottom half. Yes, yes, the one seed still won the tournament. In an event in which Crabb and Gibb didn’t really play their finest volleyball until that late Saturday evening, they still emerged victorious. But gone, possibly, are the chalk-walk days of the men’s AVP, where one can safely bet on few upsets, where qualifier teams are dismissed quickly, painlessly, where the mid-tiers are the mid-tiers and the top teams are untouchable. The same team that won the entire tournament was pushed to three sets in its first match, by qualifiers Kyle Friend and Duncan Budinger. Then they went three, again, with Riley and Maddison McKibbin, and again with Dalhausser and Lucena, and again in a semifinal rematch with Bourne and Crabb. This was a tournament where the 21 seed – qualifiers Logan Webber and Christian Honer -- beat the 11 – Chase Frishman and Piotr Marciniak – 21-11 in the deciding set, and that 21 then pushed the 14 – the McKibbins – to three. It was a tournament where Sean Rosenthal, one of the best defenders in United States history, paired with Ricardo Santos, one of the best blockers in the sport’s history, were relegated to the contender’s bracket after a first round loss to Troy Field and Tim Bomgren. “What kind of a draw is that?” Field said, laughing. It’s a draw begat from an ever-deepening talent pool, where the older establishment continues to win – “Old man Jake Gibb, still doing it,” Bourne said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter – and the younger generation, with the likes of Field, is pushing its way up. “I’d like to see a year where, unless it’s me, we see a new winner every time,” Bourne said. “We went for a while where it was always Phil or Jake and Casey.” That era may be gone. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see a record for new winners this year. Same goes, too, for the women’s side, which is seeing its average age of main draw players sink and sink and sink, as 16-year-olds Delaynie Maple and Megan Kraft qualified, along with high schoolers – and USC recruits – Audrey and Nicole Nourse. “We’re getting to a point where there’s no good draw,” Bourne said. “A few years ago, we were watching blowouts in the finals…the better our domestic tour is, it’s good for the sport. And if the AVP keeps growing, adding more prize money each year, more points, that’ll create enough opportunity for the back of the main draw players to stay afloat, to keep living. That’s the goal.”

8 Touko 201940min

It was a little more than two months ago that Brooke Niles and the Florida State team suffered their first failure in a season without too many of them. Niles had made a commitment to herself, promising that she’d have the lineup figured out by the fall, before her Seminoles went off for winter break. It was mid-February. Days before the season-opener against LSU. She still had no idea. “There’s so many combinations,” she said back then. They’ve figured it out. The tinkering is, with just a few days before the NCAA Tournament, where Florida State is the three seed, alas finished. Lineup’s set. Three wins, potentially, to earn their first NCAA Championship. “Playing all the West Coast teams in the beginning, we thought we had the right pieces, we just didn’t have the right partnerships,” Niles said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “So we changed a lot, and the second time we played UCLA we had the right partnerships but they were still kinda new.” Nothing is new now. The five starters who replaced half of the team that graduated from the 33-7 team that fell in the NCAA finals from a year ago are now experienced. The fresh partnerships have settled in, and it has shown to the tune of 17 wins in their past 18 matches, including a sweep of LSU in the CCSA finals, the fourth straight conference title for the Noles. “Our goal is to get better every time we’re out on the sand whether it’s practice or a tournament, and I think we’ve been able to do that consistently over the last ten weeks or so,” Niles said. “It’s hard because a team could start off as your ones pair and other teams can progress at different rates. You’re supposed to set your lineup how it plays our in practice so those things, so we’ve had some teams progress at different rates than other teams and we’ve had new partnerships which has been exciting as a coach. You can drive yourself crazy with how many matchups you can have on your own team.” Niles has found the sweet spot with Alaina Chacon and Madison Fitzpatrick on one, Sara Putt and Payton Rund on two, Brooke Kuhlman and Avery Poppinga on three, Molly McBain and Payton Caffrey on four and Macy Jerger and Kate Privett on five. Each has found their stride, particularly courts two, four and five, all of which are the second-ranked pairings in the country on their respective courts. Rund and Putt have gone 13-2 since the switch; Caffrey and McBain are second-ranked on four trail only LMU’s undefeated Veronica Nederend and Emma Doud; Jerger and Privett are 14-1. Niles may have genuinely had no idea, as she said back in February, what her lineup would look like come May. With a 28-5 record, another CCSA championship, a three-seed heading into the final weekend of the year, it seems the Noles have figured it out just fine. “I’ve learned a lot in the past four years just being in that title game or close to it,” Niles said. “I want to treat every match the same way we’d treat a National Championship match. It’s just another beach, playing a different team across the net, and we just really want to focus on ourselves. We are getting better and better each time we’re on the sand.”

1 Touko 201953min