SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter

It almost didn’t happen. The Cinderella run. The upsets over the 16, the four, the eight, the 22. The AVP semifinal that would be host to the highest seed – Q47 – in the tour’s history. The 8-3 jump Zana Muno and Crissy Jones would get on top-seeded Betsi Flint and Emily Day, on stadium court, on Sunday. All of that was nearly lost before any of it even got started. Towards the end of Jones’ and Muno’s fourth and final qualifier match for AVP Hermosa, Jones felt a cramp coming on, compiled by an awkward landing on her knee. They finished the match, of course. By that point, they’d come to far not to, and it was over quickly enough: 21-13, 21-7 over Lara Dykstra and Kim Smith, who were battling through injuries of their own. In that moment, they had done everything they had come to do. They qualified on the AVP Tour, something that eluded them in their only other professional event, in Seattle, where they fell in the third round to Janelle Allen and Kerri Schuh. They cried on the way home to the airport that weekend. “At the same time,” Jones said, “we were both really unsure with what we were capable of doing.” Both of them had proven more than talented enough indoors – Muno at UCLA, Jones at Washington -- to command a contract, with a salary, validation, stability, overseas. Their beach journey, at that point, had been the exact antithesis. Twice they had bought flights, booked hotels for qualifiers. Twice, in Austin and then New York, they didn’t get into the qualifier because of a lack of points. “I was like ‘Oh my God, this is so hard,’” Muno said, laughing. She’s able to laugh now, in retrospect. It’s easier to look in the rearview and smile when there’s a third place in that same rearview. They drew lessons from each, Seattle in particular. For four years at UCLA, Muno had been the favorite in virtually every match she played, finishing a brilliant career with two national championships, scoring the final point of the match that would seal the second. Now the role was flipped: Muno and Jones, a standout on court one at Cal Poly, which also enjoyed a historic season, were the underdogs, a role they embraced. “We came into Hermosa and said ‘Ok, this is our time to attack it and we’re going to go through a qualifier again and just stay present with every match we played,’” Jones said. So when they qualified, and there would be no teary exits, that was it. “Once you’re out of the qualifier you can breathe, you’re so free,” Muno said. “Once you’re in the main draw, now you have nothing to lose, you can play free.” Problem was: They almost didn’t play at all. Jones called Muno on their way to the site, told her that her knee was hurting pretty bad. She might not be able to do it. Muno, on the other end of the phone, put on a supportive look: “I’m like, ‘It’s ok, you gotta take care of yourself,’” she said, laughing – always laughing – again. Meanwhile: “I’m sobbing.” They figured they’d give it a try anyway. They told AVP tournament director Jeff Conover to pull them off of stadium court. Nobody wants to see a mid-match forfeit. So he put them on court five, and against Katie Spieler and Delaney Knudsen, a team they had beaten weeks earlier in the Santa Barbara Open, they lost 21-14, 21-10. It was the best thing that could have happened. In a 24-team draw, as Hermosa is, if you win your first round, you play almost immediately after. But if you win your first and lose your second, on minimal rest, you wind up in the exact same spot as if you had lost your first. So instead of playing a second match on hardly any rest, Muno and Jones were able to take six, seven hours off their feet. Put the legs up. Recover, finally. And then, match by match, the story of the weekend was written: a 15-10 third-set win over fellow collegians Morgan Martin (Hawai’i) and Iya Lindahl (Cal), a sweep of Meghan Mannari and Taylor Nyquist, another sweep of Brittany Hochevar and Maria Clara Salgado, a three-set win over Kim DiCello and Kelly Reeves, a thrilling three-set quarterfinal over wunderkinds Delaynie Maple and Megan Kraft. With each win, Jones would wonder to herself, “Is this really happening?” “I think the experience in general, because it was so unexpected, and because of all the adversity we had gone through to get there, we were so grateful for everything that happened and seeing all these people who had been kicking butt on tour, just giving it our best shot,” Jones said. They did that Sunday, too, but in their eleventh match, their legs finally gave in. The 8-3 lead they established on Flint and Day was flipped into a 14-21 loss. A valiant comeback in the second was thwarted. Flint and Day would go on to win. Muno would call her brother, JJ, a minor league baseball player who is currently in the Chicago White Sox system. He asked her what happened, and she said her legs just didn’t have anything left in the tank, a feeling he’s more than familiar with. Next week, though, in Manhattan Beach, they’ll have four less matches on their legs. After winning an AVP Next Gold Series in Colorado, they earned a direct main draw berth. Next week, too, they’ll have something they didn’t before: Validation. The confirmation that, yes, they can do this. They can compete with the players by whom they’re still star-struck. More than that: They can beat them. “We knew that when we got the opportunity we could hang and play with the best of them,” Muno said. “I think we just needed the opportunity. We were just trying to be as prepared as we could for [Manhattan] and our breakthrough came a little sooner than we expected.”

7 Aug 201956min

The first notes on the Book of Andy Benesh came a little less than a year ago, about a six-hour drive north of Hermosa Beach. Adam Roberts was there to watch Benesh’s second-round match. Playing in just his second AVP qualifier, with little points to his name, Benesh came in as the 33 seed, meaning, after a pigtail round, he, with Cole Fiers, had top-seeded Myles Muagututia and Kyle Friend. “I saw him serve a ball, get to the net, get four blocks in a row, get an ace, and I was like ‘Who is this kid? Let’s see if he can set,’” Adam Roberts, Benesh’s current partner, said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Standard big guy stuff, right? They serve Cole and he puts up a juicy set and I’m like ‘Man! What is his name? What is his number? I’m gonna tuck that one away.’” While Roberts had it tucked away, Benesh quietly made a few main draws. He wound up qualifying in San Francisco, upsetting Friend and Muagututia, 24-22, 21-17, and winning his next two matches. Then he and Fiers did it again in Hermosa. It was an auspicious start for Benesh’s beach career, one that really only began in earnest a few months prior to San Francisco. He had been an indoor kid, for the most part, growing up. Raised in Palos Verdes, he was named First Team All-American, put on the VolleyballMag.com Fab 50 list, All-Area, All-League, All-Everything. Those accolades earned him a spot as a middle at USC, where he started all 26 matches as a freshman, falling just shy of the Trojan hitting percentage record. So went the next three years at USC, where he continued to excel, eventually being named captain as a senior. But the only beach experience he had was messing around on the fours courts at 16th street. Which brings us back to Roberts’ key question for all big men: Could the kid set? Prior to AVP Huntington, Roberts set up a four-team practice, Benesh being one of the teams. There it was confirmed: Benesh could indeed put up a set, and after both failed to qualify in Huntington, both were looking for partners in Austin. Roberts turned back the clock to that day in San Francisco. Yes, Benesh would be quite the option.   Their first two tournaments, though, they fell short. A few quirky plays in the third set of the final round of the AVP Austin qualifier kept them out of main draw. Then came a first-round exit in New York and all of a sudden doubt began creeping in. “You look at it, and it’s ‘Are we a good team or are we not?’ We’re kinda looking at it like ‘Maybe we’re not that good’ but I was thinking ‘Man, I really think we’re a good team,’” Roberts said. “Even if you look at the results, losing the round to get in, lose first round, lose first round, maybe they’re not that good, but I just kept thinking we really have something special here. To me, it doesn’t make sense when guys make lateral moves mid-season. I just kept thinking: I think we’re a good team, I think we’re a good team.” The past few months, they’ve proved as much. They flew from New York and directly into an AVP Next Gold Series in Colorado, winning the tournament and, subsequently, a bid into the Manhattan Beach Open main draw. In Hermosa, they qualified for their first main draw, marking Benesh’s first in a year and Roberts’ first since Chicago of 2017 with – here’s a good beach volleyball trivia tidbit – Mark Burik. They were ecstatic, to be sure. But not satisfied. Not yet. “I texted Adam Thursday night and said ‘We’re not done yet,’” Benesh said. “I’m not just here to go 0-2 in the main draw. I’m trying to win some matches, see if we can compete at that level.” Oh, they competed all right. They came out and won their first main draw match 21-17, 21-11, setting up a match with fourth-seeded Billy Allen and Stafford Slick. And on a packed stadium court, they delivered the first major upset of the tournament, 23-21, 18-21, 15-11. A day later, they’d deliver another, eliminating seventh-seeded Chase Frishman and Avery Drost, 15-21, 21-18, 15-13. “Obviously coming out of the qualifier we don’t have that opportunity every tournament,” Benesh said of upsetting main draw teams. “So when you do you want to take advantage of it. I don’t think there was a team in the draw that we were intimidated by.” They’ll be back in the main draw again, in Manhattan Beach, now with a seventh-place finish under their belt, and a God-blessed day of rest prior to the tournament.   “It’s nice. It’s very nice,” Roberts said. “It kind of gives us a chance to really focus on a main draw. That extra day of rest is going to be very useful.”

31 Jul 201955min

It was an otherwise innocuous Monday when the Canadian beach volleyball community reached and unleashed its peak fury which, because it’s Canada, really wasn’t much fury at all. Tri Bourne had put up a picture of Chaim Schalk. No, no. Not just Chaim Schalk. “American Chaim Schalk,” Bourne put on Instagram. For nearly a decade, Schalk had represented Canada on the beach. He had been an Olympian for Canada on the beach. He had made international podiums for Canada on the beach. Raised in Red Deer, Alberta, with a habit of punctuating sentences with ‘eh?’ and a humility and affability that you just don’t find much in Southern California, Schalk was, by all accounts, Canadian to the core. So what was he doing, on Monday, May 6, wearing a USA Volleyball shirt, taking pictures, doing promos, looking like, well, “American Chaim Schalk”? Just running out the clock until his international volleyball purgatory is over. “I got a lot of messages on that,” Schalk said of Bourne’s post of Schalk at USA Volleyball’s Media Day. “A lot of people still didn’t know. They were like ‘What does this mean? Why do you have a USA shirt on? This is messed up!’” At the end of the 2017 FIVB season, Schalk announced that he would be making the transfer from Canada to the United States, competing for the Yanks instead of the Leafs. It meant a hefty fee and a two-year hiatus on the world tour, but it also meant access to USAV’s resources, the ability to live and compete and train full-time in Southern California, the opportunity to represent arguably the biggest powerhouse beach volleyball nation on the planet. And, while nobody wants to lose two years of their international careers, in what could be their prime, the timing was perfect for Schalk. In May, Schalk’s wife, Lane Carico, also a professional beach player, gave birth to their daughter, Koa. With Schalk unable to compete around the globe, he’s been able to spend time at home, helping with Carico, helping with Koa, witnessing the miraculous growth that is the first few months of a child’s life. “It’s been a blur the past couple months with the baby, just helping out as much as I can. It’s been so nice to be home and help out with Lane and it’s been so nice with the AVPs because I take off Thursday and then I’ll be back Sunday night,” Schalk said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “It’s been a perfect time to have a kid because I haven’t felt like I needed to be away and if I was away for a couple weeks that would be a little tougher for right now.” This is not to say that Schalk doesn’t get antsy. He watched World Championships in Hamburg. He watched the Gstaad Major. They’re his two favorite stops on tour. He saw the Instagram posts, the ones athletes just cannot help but putting up – cups of coffee in the mountains, the stunning green of Gstaad, the mountain biking, the crowds, the stadiums. “Everyone just has to do their water photo and the morning coffee, ‘Not a bad place to wake up to,’” Schalk said, shaking his head. “C’mon guys! That makes me itch a little bit.” In November, he can alas scratch that itch, getting back out onto the world tour, representing a different set of colors, a different flag, a different federation. So, Canada beach volleyball nation, soon enough, you’ll have to accept this simple reality. He’s not just Chaim Schalk anymore. He’s American Chaim Schalk.

24 Jul 20191h 6min

The most difficult transition of Ryan Doherty’s new partnership, from John Hyden to Miles Evans, might not be the difference in playing style or personality or skill level or experience or energy level or setting preferences or serving or any of the other obvious tangibles that can make partner switching a sometimes-difficult ordeal. It might just be the high five. We joke, kind of, sort of. Because we’re also serious, kind of, sort of. “Our first couple times practicing, Miles kept coming in for the high five, and Hyden – we never high-fived,” Doherty said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Miles would get an ace and I’d point and he’d be right behind me saying ‘Yeah! Let’s do this!’ “This is 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning so I gotta get used to this puppy dog energy. I’m looking forward to it.” This is the next chapter of Ryan Doherty’s career, one that is nominated for the unofficial award of Most Likely to be Made Into a Movie. Since moving on from a professional baseball career that was beginning to flat line and making the cross-country trek to California, Doherty’s path was been wonderfully circuitous and, by all means, remarkably successful. His list of partners, despite not having a volleyball background, aside from pickup games against high schoolers in South Carolina and a few Great American Volleyball events in New Jersey, is a who’s who of the best American defenders of this generation. “I have been lucky enough to play with a murderer’s row of partners, some of the best defenders in the U.S,” Doherty said. “It started with Casey Patterson, Todd Rogers, Nick Lucena, Johnny Mayer, John Hyden, back to John Mayer, Billy Allen, and then John Hyden. I was always the younger one. As someone who tries to teach and I think I know a little bit about the game I think it might be fun to help out Miles a little bit, see if I can maybe guide him a little bit.” That group has combined for more than 150 professional wins and three Olympic appearances, five if you include Hyden’s two Olympics with the indoor national team in 1996 and 2000. That level was never Doherty’s goal. He’s not much of a goal guy. He’s always, simply, wanted to become the best beach volleyball player he can be, a path on which he’s still traveling. Now he’s playing a different role, from student and sponge, soaking up the knowledge of those who have been able to dispense it, to doing the same for the next generation of defenders, one who has a legitimate shot at making that Olympic level in the years to come. “He could easily move into that great category,” Bourne said, a sentiment with which Doherty agreed.     “I’ve seen Miles play for a couple years,” Doherty said. “He’s getting better and better and I don’t know how he’s going to try to turn that corner in terms of being a good player into a great one, one of the top players in the country. His skills are there, it’s just the experience, the comfort of being at the top level. I think with his natural abilities being really physical and my calm demeanor being able to bring him down when he gets a little too ramped up, I think that might help us out a bit.” The change, in general, will likely help them both. Evans hasn’t competed in an AVP main draw since Huntington of 2016. Now, he’s straight into main with Doherty. Doherty, meanwhile, admitted this year hasn’t been his finest. Sometimes a change, not begat out of ill will but out of a need for something different, is exactly the thing. “I haven’t been playing at a very high level, so it’s one of those things where if you’re not playing really well and you’re kinda miserable, what’s the point?” Doherty said. “Let’s try to do something different, mix it up. I have no ill feelings. I hope [Hyden] keeps dominating till he’s 50 years old. I figured I’d try something new.” And so, in Evans, he is. And the next chapter of the fascinating book that is the life of Ryan Doherty begins.

17 Jul 20191h 6min

It wasn’t exactly an audacious start, was it? September 12, 2016. The first match of Melissa Humana-Paredes’ and Sarah Pavan’s partnership: A country quota against Brandie Wilkerson and – who else? – Pavan’s former partner, Heather Bansley, in Toronto, no less, the training center for the Canadian national team, where Pavan has played something of a revolutionary role. She did not, however, play that role on September 12 of 2016. On that day, her and Humana-Paredes, an affable young defender of 23 years at the time, lost, 21-23, 13-21. They wondered, almost incredulously, if they could feel such an emotion at the time, why a reporter had reminded them of that loss. He had reminded them in the moments after they had won the World Championship. It was Canada’s first. A momentous achievement not just for two individuals carving out history in a sport rich in it, but for a nation that is rapidly creating a foothold in a space traditionally dominated by countries south of the Canadian border.   “Why would you remind us of that?” they wondered, simultaneously. Because it makes the narrative that much sweeter, the process that much more real. There is no relating to a story with a smooth beginning, steep curve in the middle and a World Championship at the end. They know it, too, even if they didn’t want to relive that country quota loss quite so soon after reaching a new pinnacle for Canadian beach volleyball. “Every failure,” Pavan said, “has led to this moment. Nobody sees the tough moments.” What most see is that Humana-Paredes and Pavan are currently doing for Canada, on their on relative scale, what Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May Treanor once did for the United States: They’re writing their own country’s history.   It was at Gstaad, where the best players in the world are currently competing, a year ago where Pavan and Humana-Paredes claimed Canada’s first major title. Didn’t even lose a match, those Canadians, dethroning the countries that laid the foundation of beach volleyball’s traditional powers that be: 21-15, 21-15 over the United States, 14-21, 21-12, 15-13 over Brazil, 21-17, 12-21, 17-15 over Germany. Only months before that, they had become the first Canadian team to win a Commonwealth Games. It was last June when Humana-Paredes said, on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, that “we have so much more that we need to improve on and that we can improve on and I think our potential – it seems limitless right now."  Prophetic words. It hasn’t all been pretty, and they knew it wouldn’t. Pavan knew she was taking a chance on Humana-Paredes then, who had been relatively unproven at the time. She knew the potential upside, an upside that is now paying dividends in the form of history, of major titles, of World Championships. “It happened much quicker than either of us expected,” Pavan said on that episode a year ago, and those same words ring true a year later. “It’s nice to see the grit and the fire of not being satisfied with making one semifinal or one podium or whatever.” And so they’ll continue to remain unsatisfied. So long as reporters continue to remind them of their humble beginnings, if not only to show them just how far they’ve come. “The things we have overcome this week, last week, this year, in the last two years, three years and now we’re world champions,” Humana-Paredes said. “I have no words.” No need for words when you have history.

10 Jul 20191h 6min

It was the running joke in the player’s tent of AVP New York: Nobody really wanted to play any of the teams on the bracket. Of the seven teams Tim Bomgren would end up playing in New York, five included Olympians, and the other two were teams currently pushing for Tokyo 2020. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Bomgren said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “You look at the bracket and you’re like ‘Ok, I’m not really happy about playing any of these teams.’ It’s just one of those.” Bomgren and his new partner, Troy Field, the social media maven with the big jumps and the pink hat, can officially be labeled as one of those teams nobody would particularly enjoy playing, in large part because of talent, but also because balls that should go down just don’t, as if they’ve got the remote control to gravity and have found a way to keep Wilson off the sand for just a tad longer. “Team never say die,” Camryn Irwin labeled them on the Amazon Prime livestream of New York, where Field and Bomgren produced highlights of viral potential like most teams produce regular side outs. “We both know we’re going to be as scrappy as we possibly can and we’re just going to work our tails off,” Bomgren said. “We might not be the smoothest side out players, we might not be the best setters, we might not be the best servers, but we’re going to scratch and claw our way to get whatever points we can. So far it’s worked out pretty well.” Don’t listen to him. Not even for a second. That’s the Minnesotan in him. By now you know Bomgren’s story: Minnesota born and raised, playing every sport there is to play. Picked up volleyball in college but was so darn athletic it didn’t matter he had a late start. Not all that much different from his partner, really. Field, too, had a late introduction to the sport and initially, sure, but by now both are deeply skilled enough that it’s the combination of a scrappiness begat from an initial need for it blended with a bona fide beach skill set that makes them one of the most exciting teams to watch. And one of the most consistently successful teams on tour. Without a single competitive match under their belt, they made the semifinals in Huntington Beach. They won their first match over Sean Rosenthal and Ricardo Santos, two Mount Rushmore-worthy candidates for their respective countries. They beat champs in Ed Ratledge and Rafu Rodriguez, and future Seattle winners Jeremy Casebeer and Chaim Schalk. Any thoughts of it being a honeymoon phase were quickly silenced when they did the same thing the following tournament in Austin, then slugged their way through the gauntlet of New York, where they made their first final, falling to Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena but not before gifting the Amazon Prime staff a coterie of highlights for the internet to enjoy. “Both him and I just love the game and love the competition,” Bomgren said. “Getting along with your partner and having fun with your partner is so key. I hope you guys can tell it, but Troy and I are having an absolute blast out there. It’s making some of our success feel that much easier because we’re having so much fun.” He still feels like an underdog, Bomgren. Partly because he’s still in Minnesota. Partly because, I mean, what the hell, he’s not shooting for the Olympics. Yet here he is anyway, grinding through matches against the world’s elite. He acknowledges that he knows he belongs, that it doesn’t really matter to him if he has an armada of coaches pounding balls at him five days a week. He just doesn’t need that many reps. And besides, he’s got his son, Brody, an affable two-year-old who wants nothing more than to play volley in the basement with dad after work. Not the most traditional program, but when has Bomgren’s success been traditional, anyway? “One of the things that’s eye-opening is when you finally see the success,” he said. “Getting that success is never easy. You have to work your tail off, and that’s kind of my game. I’m not the best passer, not the best setter, not the best hitter, but controlling the things I can control has been huge for me and I’m doing that better than I have before and compiling those things together has allowed me to play at the top level and make it to where I want to be. I’m ready to really play at the top level.”

3 Jul 201953min

With one, final Jeremy Casebeer – or Uncle Jer Bear, as he was known at Lake Sammamish – swing in Seattle, the AVP officially reached the midpoint of the 2019 season. It has, by any measure, been a rollicking success. Every event has been home to packed stadiums and sold out VIP areas and flowing beer gardens. Most importantly, it’s been home to excellent beach volleyball. Upsets have become the norm this season, a sign that the field, on both the men’s and the women’s side, is deepening. Qualifier teams have upset the one seed in the men and the women. Three different teams have won a men’s title and three different have won a women’s title. Two of those victors on the women’s end – Karissa Cook and Jace Pardon, Kelley Larsen and Emily Stockman – have been new winners, while one, Uncle Jer Bear and Chaim Schalk, has been a first-timer for the men. It’s made for a fun season to watch for fans, one in which new faces are emerging, older ones are being pushed, and people are coming out in droves to see it. On SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, the hosts break down the mid-season AVP awards.   MVP Men’s: Taylor Crabb Few have ever looked so indifferent when being introduced in an AVP final. Yet there Taylor Crabb sits, legs crossed, paying attention to seemingly everything but his name being called to play an AVP final. Such is the state of mind when you expect to be there, and it’s easy to see why Crabb does, indeed, expect to be there. Crabb and Gibb won the first two events of the season, in Huntington Beach and Austin, making it three straight when dating it back to Chicago of 2018. In the past two seasons, they’ve made eight finals in 10 events, not including the Hawai’i Invitational. Much of this is due, yes, to Gibb, but Crabb is playing at a level unmatchedon the AVP this season.   In the running: Phil Dalhausser, Nick Lucena, Jake Gibb, Jeremy Casebeer   Women’s: April Ross In discussing Ross, Bourne wondered when the last time the 37-year-old wasn’t only the best player in the country, but in the world. She has played two AVPs this season and won both. Her and Alix Klineman have played six FIVBs and won two. As with Crabb, much of the credit goes to Klineman’s 6-foot-4 presence at the net, but Ross is the engine, fueled by a serve that has earned her FIVB’s Best Server five times since 2013, and an all-around game that has awarded her four AVP MVP’s since the same year.   In the running: Alix Kineman, Sarah Sponcil, Betsi Flint, Emily Day     Rookie of the Year Men’s: Paul Lotman Of the many skills, both tangible and not, you cannot teach in beach volleyball, one is this: Being an Olympian. Lotman has that distinction, and it’s beginning to show, as his indoor game translates to the beach. A year ago, Lotman showed glimpses of his beach potential in a titanic serve and the physicality that earned him a spot on the 2012 Olympic team. But there were a few skills that needed grooming. Consider them groomed. Lotman and Gabe Ospina have qualified for three straight events, all small draws, and became just the second 16-seed to beat a one in AVP history, topping Gibb and Crabb in Austin. They don’t seem to be slowing, either. Now, with enough points to likely get them straight into Hermosa and Manhattan, they won’t have qualifier legs, but fresh ones prepared to make a move deeper into main.   In the running: Gabe Ospina, Kyle Friend, David Lee     Women’s: Terese Cannon Truth be told, I don’t know whether Cannon is still, technically, considered a rookie, because she’s made a handful of main draws prior to this season. But if she’s eligible, Cannon has a runaway case for Rookie of the Year. She took third in Austin – she skipped Huntington Beach for NCAA Championships – to begin the year and has taken a ninth and seventh since. Her and Irene Pollock have enough points where they’ll be in main draw for the remainder of the year, making Cannon the early, and heavy, favorite to win.   In the running: Kim Hildreth, Sarah Schermerhorn, Falyn Fonoimoana, Emily Hartong     Breakthrough Athlete Men’s: Troy Field Field’s rise on the AVP, both as a player and personality, has been meteoric. He has gone, in the span of two years, as that qualifier guy wearing a pink hat who could jump really high to a bona fide contender to winning AVPs. In four events this season, he and Tim Bomgren have made three Sundays, including a final, Field’s first, in New York City. With Hermosa and Manhattan expected to be a tad watered down, with teams skipping for Olympic qualifiers, odds are that Field and Bomgren will be back in the finals soon enough.   In the running: Tim Bomgren, Chase Budinger, Jeremy Casebeer, Chaim Schalk     Women’s: Jace Pardon A few weeks prior to Huntington Beach, Pardon wasn’t sure who she was going to play with. She had popped around with a few different partners in 2018, never really finding a consistent rhythm with any, one player. Then Karissa Cook freed up, and the rest, you could say, is history in the making. They took a fifth in Huntington, and then worked their way through the contender’s bracket in Austin to claim their first AVP titles. Far from one-hit wonders, they made another quarterfinal in New York and then a second Sunday in Seattle.   In the running: Karissa Cook, Emily Stockman, Sarah Sponcil, Irene Pollock

26 Jun 201949min

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 Jun 20191h 13min