SANDCAST No. 8: Phil Dalhausser has another mountain to climb

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.”

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