Podcast appearances and mentions of Alix Klineman

Welcome to Beach Access, where Travis Mewhirter and sometimes Kyle Friend and sometimes Tri Bourne break down all things domestic beach volleyball. Today, Travis is breaking down week 2 of the AVP League in Miami, discussing: Why Trevor Crabb, he of the Miami Mayhem, thinks there might be a home field advantage Why each team's No. 2 pairing will be critical to success in the AVP League How April Ross and Alix Klineman made the most of their wild card into the League And that's about it. Not much to wrap up from week 2 of the AVP League. What do y'all think so far? SHOOTS and GO NOLES! *** Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST63. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Introducing Balltime, the AI platform making breaking down film and statistics EASY (FINALLY!). Use our link for a discount and give it a try! 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.  We have a new book! Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. Check it out on Amazon! We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB    

Welcome back to Beach Access, where Kyle Friend and Travis Mewhirter break down, preview, recap, analyze, and chat all things beach volleyball. After a week in Germany for the Hamburg Elite16, the boys are back stateside and heading to AVP Chicago, the final stop on the AVP calendar, where there are huge AVP League implications. We chat about: - What every team needs to do to qualify for the AVP League - Why we believe April Ross and Alix Klineman will get a wild card, making it an even tighter race for the women - Why the contender's bracket on Saturday will be the most interesting aspect of the weekend - Why Travis is all-in on a heroic run from Tri Bourne and Ryan Wilcox to make the league -- zero bias here! SHOOTS! *** Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST63. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Introducing Balltime, the AI platform making breaking down film and statistics EASY (FINALLY!). Use our link for a discount and give it a try! 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.  We have a new book! Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. Check it out on Amazon! We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features April Ross and Alix Klineman, one of the most successful teams in the world of the past five years and, of course, the gold medalists of the Tokyo Olympic Games. After winning gold in Tokyo, both began seeking the next major chapter of their lives: motherhood. Now, with a pair of sons in tow, they are back on the beach for one final AVP season together. On this episode, we chat about: The insane work ethic required to pursue Olympic quad after Olympic quad after Olympic quad as Ross did for these past 20 years How vastly different their preparation for matches and tournaments is now that they're both moms How becoming a mother has impacted their view of and role in the sport Why they're still playing, and still as competitive as ever And so much more. Such a fun chat with April and Alix – the A Plus Team. SHOOTS! *** Book your spot in Root and Fruit Nutrition's new Genomic Edge Program! Just 30 spots remain in a must-have competitive edge! Looking for the cleanest supplements in the business? Momentous has you covered. Use SANDCAST15 for 15 percent off.  Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball 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.  We have a new book! Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. Check it out on Amazon! We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB  

Steve Obradovich is reviving fours beach volleyball in the United States with the Newport Beach Volleyball Invitational on October 21st. It features a star-studded field of both players and sponsors alike, with the teams being: Taylor Crabb, Taylor Sander, Nick Lucena and Alex Ranghieri; Sean Rosenthal, Jake Gibb, Miles Partain, and Andy Benesh Troy Field, Casey Patterson, Chase Frishman, and Brenden Sander For the women, the teams are Kelly Cheng, Sarah Sponcil, Toni Rodriguez, and Emily Stockman Betsi Flint, Alix Klineman, Carli Lloyd, Julia Scoles, and Megan Rice Savvy Simo, Zana Muno, Carly Skjodt, Kylie Deberg, and Amy Ozee. On this episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, we chatted all about Obradovich's story as a player – the Bad Boy as he was known – why Obradovich is putting on this tournament, with $2,000 appearance fees for every player, and how this is a beta test for a potential fours beach volleyball league, with franchises, drafts, general managers, the whole nine. This episode could not have been more fun. For more information on the Newport Beach Invitational, go to nbvolleyball.com. SHOOTS! Photo Credit Bruce Hazelton *** We FINALLY have an alcohol sponsor, y'all! Bartender In A Box is here. SANDCAST and Bartender in a Box invite you and 12 of your friends to enjoy just one Box of their Premium Bar Quality Libations for around $20 bucks.  Bring in the fall right and Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code SANDCAST at Manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code SANDCAST. As the leaves fall, make sure you have it all with MANSCAPED™. Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter have a NEW BOOK! Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. Check it out on Amazon! NEWWW SPONSORRR!! If you're looking for a better way to reset your body and mind and begin your cold therapy journey, try Ice Barrel and get $150 off your order. Go to IceBarrel.com and use code SANDCAST. That's IceBarrel.com and use code SANDCAST for $150 off your order. Get Colder. Feel Better! A huge shoutout to our new sponsor, Goodr! Making the best shades on the beach, for the easy price of $25! Goodr makes $25 active sunglasses that don't slip, don't bounce, and are 100% Polarized! If you want to support the show and pick up a pair, goodr is giving SANDCAST listeners FREE SHIPPING on your first order! You can go to goodr.com/SANDCAST and use code SANDCAST to get FREE shipping. goodr offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee and 100% Satisfaction. Find your pair at goodr.com/SANDCAST and use code SANDCAST to get FREE shipping. We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Stay healthy with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter and get your greens today! https://athleticgreens.com/partner/d35ctoffer-strength/en?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=sandcast_d35ct__a3172__o27&utm_term=cac__a3172__o27&utm_content=sport__a3172__o27 We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB SHOOTS!    

Hailey Harward is one of the brightest young talents making her rise up both the AVP and Volleyball World rankings. A year after winning her first AVP as a rookie in Fort Lauderdale, Harward bumped her average finish on Tour to nearly a fifth, tripled her international prize money, increased her AVP prize money by 38% and, oh yes, got picked up by Alix Klineman and scooped a wild card into the Beach Volleyball World Championships. So yes, it's been a big year for Hailey Harward, and we chat all about it, including: The pressure and expectations going into a sophomore season after a standout rookie season How she and Alix Klineman partnered up What it's been like practicing with Alix Klineman and April Ross, two of her idols Her mindset shift, being kinder to herself while remaining tenacious in her work ethic And a whole lot more. Great chat with Hailey Harward that we think you'll enjoy! SHOOTS! *** We FINALLY have an alcohol sponsor, y'all! Bartender In A Box is here. SANDCAST and Bartender in a Box invite you and 12 of your friends to enjoy just one Box of their Premium Bar Quality Libations for around $20 bucks.  Bring in the fall right and Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code SANDCAST at Manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code SANDCAST. As the leaves fall, make sure you have it all with MANSCAPED™. Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter have a NEW BOOK! Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. Check it out on Amazon! NEWWW SPONSORRR!! If you're looking for a better way to reset your body and mind and begin your cold therapy journey, try Ice Barrel and get $150 off your order. Go to IceBarrel.com and use code SANDCAST. That's IceBarrel.com and use code SANDCAST for $150 off your order. Get Colder. Feel Better! A huge shoutout to our new sponsor, Goodr! Making the best shades on the beach, for the easy price of $25! Goodr makes $25 active sunglasses that don't slip, don't bounce, and are 100% Polarized! If you want to support the show and pick up a pair, goodr is giving SANDCAST listeners FREE SHIPPING on your first order! You can go to goodr.com/SANDCAST and use code SANDCAST to get FREE shipping. goodr offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee and 100% Satisfaction. Find your pair at goodr.com/SANDCAST and use code SANDCAST to get FREE shipping. We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Stay healthy with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter and get your greens today! https://athleticgreens.com/partner/d35ctoffer-strength/en?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=sandcast_d35ct__a3172__o27&utm_term=cac__a3172__o27&utm_content=sport__a3172__o27 We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB SHOOTS!  

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is a special one, as it is the launch of our new book, Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. You can buy the book on Amazon!  We whittled it down into 352 pages, featuring everyone from gold medalists such as April Ross and Alix Klineman to the legends in Sinjin Smith and Kent Steffes and Karch Kiraly to the entrepreneurs in this sport like Mark Burik and Brandon Joyner to the coaches who are developing the next generation such as John Mayer, Angie Akers, Jose Loiola, and more. It is – and I'm biased, I know – a phenomenal book, and I cannot recommend it enough. On this episode, we chatted about: How unexpected the success of this podcast has been The incredible lessons we've both taken away from it, and how it has been a massive factor in Travis' success as a player, expediting his improvement beyond any measurable degree How it has inspired Tri to look beyond simply playing beach volleyball as a career, making him think about his next possible steps And our favorite and most memorable episodes of the podcast And so, so much more. We appreciate y'all so much for listening and supporting us for the past five-plus years! Much love, and many more big things to come! SHOOTS! *** Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter have a NEW BOOK! Playbook of Champions: The habits, routines, and stories of Olympians, Champions, and world-class athletes. If you listen to the show – which, if you're reading this, then you are – then this is the perfect book for you, as it is a distillation of the best golden nuggets from our first five years of the podcast. Check it out on Amazon! A huge shoutout to our new sponsor, Goodr! Making the best shades on the beach, for the easy price of $25! Goodr makes $25 active sunglasses that don't slip, don't bounce, and are 100% Polarized! If you want to support the show and pick up a pair, goodr is giving SANDCAST listeners FREE SHIPPING on your first order! You can go to goodr.com/SANDCAST and use code SANDCAST to get FREE shipping. goodr offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee and 100% Satisfaction. Find your pair at goodr.com/SANDCAST and use code SANDCAST to get FREE shipping. We have a new -- but temporary -- sponsor with the Saucedwear Tournament, a $17,000 open with $5k to the winners down in Navarre Beach, Fla., where Travis Mewhirter first learned to play. Registration ends on July 14, and players can sign up at saucedwear.com!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Stay healthy with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter and get your greens today! https://athleticgreens.com/partner/d35ctoffer-strength/en?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=sandcast_d35ct__a3172__o27&utm_term=cac__a3172__o27&utm_content=sport__a3172__o27 We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB SHOOTS!

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter and, in this case, Savvy Simo, features our always-popular fan questions. It's been a wild year, with both the AVP and Volleyball World under new management, new systems, new content delivery, new everything. We had a lot of questions, and a lot to chat about. Which is what we did, answering: - What are our thoughts on the new AVP tier system? - How has the AVP and Volleyball World been run so far? - Any update on April Ross and Alix Klineman? - What happened to the United States at the World Championships? And a wholeeeee lot more. ENJOY! *** We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastmerch.com/ 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/ This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB

For our special 2022 International Women's Day podcast episode we speak to two of Orreco's Female Athlete Consultancy clients and Team USA Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medallists in Beach Volleyball, April Ross and Alix Klineman.In our conversation, Alix recalls her reasons and experience of coming off hormonal contraception and how Orreco's Female Athlete Lead Dr Georgie Bruinvels helped prepare her for it, the multi-disciplinary approach Orreco implemented ahead of competing at the Tokyo Games, plus how the Olympic Champions optimize their travel and sleep regimes and why they want to break down barriers and open up the conversation around the menstrual cycle.

How Women Win Our Way – with CHAMP10N Guest Angie Akers, Retired Professional Beach Volleyball Player, former Federation Coach for Beach Team Netherlands and 2021 Tokyo Olympics Gold Medal Coach for Team USA- April Ross and Alix Klineman.JOIN US On the Journey to Discover How Women Win Our Way…Check out this week's 10 talks podcast episode to hear HOW WOMEN WIN with our next guest, Angie Akers.WINNING STRATEGIES1. How do you change and win? One of the most important things is to rely on other people and ask for help when you need it. Make sure everyone within your team or organization are on the same page. Have conversations about your core values, team expectations, and how your program competes. You do not have to do everything by yourself; the standard or expectation for women coaches is to try to do it all and not ask for support, but this is not a great winning strategy for your team and most importantly yourself.2. Reliability is important from a player-coach relationship perspective. When female athletes have female coaches, they will understand and relate more to components such as body insecurities or hormonal changes and responses, which are areas that male coaches coaching female athletes may not be able to fully understand or empathize with.3. Pay attention to how players receive feedback you are giving them as coaches. On a general level, female coaches are more apt to give feedback in a positive, caring way, whereas males are more direct and may come across as more stern. Though this is definitely not true for all female and male coaches, it is still important regardless to understand your players and the ways in which they take feedback. Are your players more responsive to hearing feedback in a direct, harsh tone? Or are they more likely to succeed if it is brought to their attention in a more empathetic manner? Somewhere in between?Stay tuned next week to hear how Kathy and Carlette are Teaming Up to Discover, Design, and Do – "Winning Our Way". Want to G.I.V.E.H.O.P.E. to other women by sharing how you win? Learn More Here: www.championwellbeing.com/how-women-win-surveyWatch here: https://youtu.be/p_qmMhNoYtg

Olympic gold medalists and beach volleyball team Alix Klineman and April Ross (a.k.a. The A-Team!) join Laughter Permitted to talk about the hilarious backstory of how they became partners (it involves Stagecoach and an errant text), the moment they knew their partnership could work and how their shared perfectionist mentality is effective for them. Recorded live at the espnW Women + Sports Summit, Alix and April also breakdown why they hug between every point during matches. Plus find out what comedian Amy Schumer DMd Alix before the gold medal match in Tokyo.

Olympic gold medalist Alix Klineman joins Kelley to talk about her journey from indoor volleyball star to beach volleyball champion. An athlete since childhood, Klineman was an All-American indoor player at Stanford and a member of Team USA before she decided to make the life-changing switch to beach. Klineman discusses the freedom that came with failing while transitioning sports and the importance of taking care of your body even when you're young. She then takes Kelley behind the scenes of her and April Ross' gold medal run at the Tokyo Olympics, where Klineman confirms that yes, she was nervous.

This week's conversation is with professional volleyball players and Olympians Alix Klineman and April Ross. Otherwise known as, The A-Team.On August 6 of this year, Alix and April captured the gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics, after winning in straight sets versus Australia. In the entire tournament, they went undefeated in match play, only losing one set throughout seven matches. Two weeks later, the pair won the AVP Manhattan Beach Open, their second time winning this tournament together.I've had the privilege to work with both of them - Alix while she was a member of the USA women's national team for indoor volleyball and April throughout the 2016 Olympic Quad.It was an absolute joy to watch them come together to grab the gold in Tokyo.In this conversation, we discuss their journey to Gold… the formation of their partnership, their process for building trust, and what goes into performing at their best when the stakes are the highest.----Please support our partners!We're able to keep growing and creating content for YOU because of their support. We believe in their mission and would appreciate you supporting them in return!!To take advantage of deals from our partners, head to http://www.findingmastery.net/partners where you'll find all discount links and codes mentioned in the podcast.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Tokyo Olympic GOLD MEDALISTS April Ross and Alix Klineman, as well as the lovable and wonderful and fantastic guest host, Chris Geeter McGee.  What an absolute treat this episode is. Over a few glasses of wine, Ross and Klineman discuss: - How they didn't consider themselves favorites heading into Tokyo  - Their experience at the Olympic Games, and how Klineman felt oddly calm during the entire experience - Ross' decision to go with Klineman, and how it was only Jen Kessy who agreed that Klineman was the best option - Whether or not they intend to play Paris together And so, so much more. ENJOY! *** We now have SANDCAST MERCHANDISE!! Rock the gear of your favorite podcast today! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/merchandise/ This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB  Be sure to check out some of the coolest beach volleyball gear in the country at Vollis Beach! Recently partnered with LuLu Lemon, Vollis is offering high quality, good looking apparel, and you can get it at a discount using Travisfans to get 15 percent off! https://www.vollisgear.com/ SHOOTS!  

Ep. #15, hear Caroline catch-up with Thayer Lavielle, the Executive Vice President at The Collective, which is the women's division of the sports marketing & talent management company, Wasserman.On August 2, 2021, Thayer and her team launched The Collective® Marketplace: the first & only online collectible & memorabilia marketplace that is dedicated to women's sports. The Collective® Marketplace platform enables fans to buy authentic game-used, autographed memorabilia and licensed products of the world's biggest women athletes. The Marketplace launched with contributions from some of the biggest names in women's sports, including Sue Bird, Mia Hamm, Alix Klineman, Hilary Knight, Alex Morgan, Katelyn Ohashi, Nneka Ogwumike, Morgan Pressel, Megan Rapinoe, April Ross, Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi.  Not only will The Collective® Marketplace put money directly into the pockets of women athletes, it's the first time that women's sports fans will have access to a robust supply of memorabilia.The Collective is launching this platform during a record-breaking year for women's sports collectibles & memorabilia sales. In 2021 alone, eBay has seen a significant rise in women's sports trading cards sales, with WNBA card sales up more than 1,100% over two years, and women's soccer card sales up 172%. Recently, an Alex Morgan card sold for $16,000, a Serena Williams rookie card went for $14,483, and a Mia Hamm Rookie Card sold for $34,440 at auction, making it the top-selling women's sports card of all-time. Listen to Thayer and Caroline discuss how The Collective® Marketplace is a game-changer for women athletes & women's sports fans alike.This episode was recorded on August 2, 2021. Shop the The Collective® Marketplace.More from GOALS The Business Case For Women's Sports Newsletter: Sign-upFollow GOALS on Twitter: @goals_sports_Follow GOALS on Instagram: @goals_sports_Follow GOALS on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/goals-sports Shop: goals-sports.com/shopEmail: hello@goals-sports.com

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features the newest elite blocker on the AVP Tour: Taryn Kloth.  Kloth pulled off the virtually unprecedented in winning the first AVP event of her career alongside wunderkind Kristen Nuss, and in Manhattan Beach, the two claimed fifth, losing only to April Ross and Alix Klineman and Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes.  On this episode, we discuss: - How Kloth was able to manage the nerves of her first AVP main draw and win the whole thing, beating three Olympians in the process - Kloth's path to beach volleyball, from frigid South Dakota to hot and humid Louisiana - How a street sign was all she needed to turn down big offers indoors to pursue beach volleyball full-time - The mindset she has, and why choosing the difficult path is always the path for her And, as always, much, much more.  ENJOY!   *** This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball   Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB    Be sure to check out some of the coolest beach volleyball gear in the country at Vollis Beach! Recently partnered with LuLu Lemon, Vollis is offering high quality, good looking apparel, and you can get it at a discount using Travisfans to get 15 percent off! https://www.vollisgear.com/   SHOOTS!  

Welcome to season 3 of Set Point. In this episode, the NCAA women's volleyball season kicks off this weekend, as Teran Rodriguez previews the noteworthy matches and which teams that aren't ranked that could make a big splash. Rodriguez also recaps the Long Beach State-Pepperdine women's that he went to and what he liked about it. Finally, Rodriguez recaps the Manhattan Beach Open of the AVP and what history April Ross and Alix Klineman made. All of the thoughts and opinions are that of Teran Rodriguez and not of any second or third party organizations. Twitter of host: @TeranRodriguez1 Twitter of show: @Set_PointIE

A friendly reminder of the OTC's guidelines. Tons of new workouts and programs. Coach Jackson is letting YOU pick HIS workout. The Tonal Blog spotlights April Ross and Alix Klineman's workouts. More from the Tonal Blog - Sue Bird's total body workout. How Tonal athletes fared in the Olympics. The latest Tonal Talk spotlights data scientists. Tonal is helping you find an accountability partner. The August Challenge is here. The Tonal Book Club features Hooked. Birthdays - Coach Paul (8/6) All this plus our interview with Natalie Carey! Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here's How » Join The Superset community today: theclipout.com The Clip Out Facebook The Clip Out Twitter The Clip Out Instagram

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is a rare throwback episode, a replay from the fifth podcast we ever did: With April Ross.  The reason we're re-airing this one, and not recording a new one, is because it's just so damn good, and to hear what April Ross had to say in November of 2017, and then compare it to what happened four years later, is nothing short of incredible. Every word she said back then in Tri Bourne's kitchen came true. To the word. Honestly, it's one of the best episodes we've ever recorded, and it aged far finer than the wine we shared that night.  If you missed this episode before, please listen to it now. We discuss: - April's crossroads at the end of 2017: To continue pursuing the international game, or to simplify, play AVPs, and begin her exit.  - Her mindset, and her commitment to small, daily improvements, and how she finds -- or tries to -- balance in life.  - The critical importance of introspection throughout her career - Why she chose Alix Klineman, and why she thought, four years ago, Klineman was her only option to win a gold medal in Tokyo *** This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! Check out our book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, written by SANDCAST hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter: https://www.amazon.com/Volleyball-Milkshakes-Travis-Mewhirter/dp/B089781SHB https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball SHOOTS!  

In this episode, Teran Rodriguez welcomes back Los Alamitos High School girls volleyball coach Dave Huber to discuss the U.S. women's volleyball team winning gold and what role Huber's former player Justine Wong-Orantes played to helping them win gold. Rodriguez also talks about April Ross and Alix Klineman winning gold in beach volleyball and what this means for Ross' legacy. Finally, NCAA women's volleyball team are starting to report for season, as there will be talk of that and the most recent transfer players and returning seniors. Disclaimer: these are the thoughts and opinions of Teran Rodriguez and Dave Huber and not the thoughts and opinions of IE Sports Radio, Los Alamitos High School or any second or third party organization. Twitter of host: @TeranRodriguez1 Twitter of show: @Set_PointIE

Joining Sports Sunday from two time zones away, Lee Feinswog of Volleyball Magazine delivers the most in-depth recap and analysis of the USA Women's Volleyball gold medal runs in both indoor and beach v-ball. April Ross, Alix Klineman, Jordan Thompson, and all the other USA gold medalists get the credit they deserve in this post-Olympics interview!

Lindsay Czarniak and Lolo Jones interview 3-time Olympian Foluke Akinradewo Gunderson on her journey returning to Volleyball as a mother. Foluke talks about the strength of teammates and family, and their roles in recovery and pushing forward to win gold.Later, they are joined by U.S. Beach Volleyball players Alix Klineman and April Ross for a conversation on their recently won Gold Medal. Klineman and Ross discuss the inception of their team, and the perseverance it took to get to Tokyo.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you for tuning in to episode 53 of the SoCal Supreme Sports Show. In this episode, Teran Rodriguez disucusses the free agent signings from the Lakers and Clippers and who benefitted on which signing. Rodriguez also discusses Southern California locals April Ross and Alix Klineman winning gold in beach volleyball and what it means for Ross. Finally, Rodriguez discusses the Galaxy heading in the right direction, how the Dodgers, Padres and Angels as of late, the Chargers and Rams in training camp and more! The thoughts and opinions of Teran Rodriguez are his and his alone and not of any second or third party organizations. Twitter of show: @SoCalShowIESR Twitter of host: @TeranRodriguez1

The Mightier 1090's Arash Markazi and producer Ji Hae Wiley talk about LeBron James taking a shot at critics who say the Lakers are too old this season.Join the Bleav Network, Arash Markazi and producer Ji Hae Wiley as they talk about all things LA sports related.And do not forget to follow or subscribe to The Arash Markazi Show on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, & I Heart Radio. Also check out his daily columns on themorningcolumn.comMusic Credit: Alright by Kendrick LamarHumble by Kendrick LamarI Get Around by 2PacTo Live and Die in L.A. by 2PacSocial Media Outlets:Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @arashmarkazi @1090themightier & @HaeJhoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Mightier 1090's Arash Markazi and producer Ji Hae Wiley talk about Max Scherzer amazing 10-strikeout debut as the Dodgers defeat the Houston Astros at Dodger Stadium in front of the largest crowd to see an MLB game this season.Join the Bleav Network, Arash Markazi and producer Ji Hae Wiley as they talk about all things LA sports related.And do not forget to follow or subscribe to The Arash Markazi Show on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, & I Heart Radio. Also check out his daily columns on themorningcolumn.comMusic Credit: Alright by Kendrick LamarHumble by Kendrick LamarI Get Around by 2PacTo Live and Die in L.A. by 2PacSocial Media Outlets:Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @arashmarkazi @1090themightier & @HaeJhoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

MLB – Major League Baseball Yesterday Detroit Tigers 6, Minnesota Twins 5 – F/11 Innings Chicago White Sox 5, Kansas City Royals 3 Cincinnati Reds 7, Chicago Cubs 4 Tigers 6, Twins 5 – F/11 – Cabrera, Haase power Tigers past Twins 6-5 in 11th innings Miguel Cabrera hit a run-scoring single in the 11th inning after Eric Haase tied the game with a grand slam in the top of the ninth as the Detroit Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins 6-5. Cabrera’s hit scored automatic runner Jonathan Schoop. The Tigers tied the game with a homer in the ninth inning for the second straight game. Robbie Grossman, who singled to start the ninth-inning comeback, hit a two-run homer on Monday night before Minnesota won 6-5 in 10 innings. Mitch Garver hit a first-inning grand slam for the Twins. White Sox 5, Royals 3 – Jiménez hits 3-run HR, rallies White Sox past Royals 5-3 Eloy Jiménez logged his first big hit of the season, launching a go-ahead, three-run homer in the eighth inning that sent the Chicago White Sox over the Kansas City Royals 5-3. The 24-year-old slugger, who was the 2019 AL Rookie of the Year and then kept up his power surge during the pandemic-shortened season, tore a pectoral muscle in spring training. He hadn’t played in the majors until going 0 for 4 Monday night. But Jiménez quickly made up for lost time in his second game. After hitting a single in his first at-bat, he came up in the eighth after a two-out intentional walk to Jose Abreu with Chicago trailing 3-2. Jiménez connected for a 459-foot drive to cap a four-run rally for the AL Central leaders. Reds 7, Cubs 4 – Votto hits 2 more homers as Reds roll past Cubs 7-4 Joey Votto continued his power surge with two home runs and started a dazzling double play as the Cincinnati Reds pulled away to a 7-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Votto has homered in a career-high four consecutive games for the second time, one game shy of the team record. The Reds hit four home runs in winning for the third time in five games. The Cubs lost for the sixth time in their last 10. Cincinnati rookie Vladimir Gutierrez pitched 6 1/3 innings of five-hit ball to earn the win. Cubs starter Adbert Alzolay allowed three home runs in five innings. Tonight Detroit Tigers at Minnesota Twins, 1:10 p.m.                    94.9 WSJM/103.7 Cosy-FM 12:50 Cincinnati Reds at Chicago Cubs, 8:05 p.m. Chicago White Sox at Kansas City Royals, 8:10 p.m. NHL – Vegas trades Fleury to Chicago as goalie carousel spins, get Johnson from champs The Vegas Golden Knights have traded reigning Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury to the Chicago Blackhawks. Vegas got minor leaguer Mikael Hakkarainen in return, indicating the move was a salary dump. Fleury counts $7 million against the salary cap next season. Chicago was not on the 36-year-old’s 10-team no-trade list. Agent Allan Walsh says Fleury will be taking time to talk to his family and evaluate his hockey future.  Chicago wasn’t done there, the Blackhawks also acquired forward Tyler Johnson from the Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for the contract of injured Blackhawks defenseman Brent Seabrook.  The move by Tampa takes Johnson $5-million contract off the salary cap. Seabrook announced his retirement during the past season citing injury, he is listed on long term injured reserve and his contract does not count in the salary cap calculations.  Seabrook had 3 years left on his contract and will make $6.875 million each year.   The trade also sent a 2023 second round pick from Tampa Bay to Chicago. NCAAFB – Big 12′s Texas, Oklahoma make request to join powerhouse SEC Texas and Oklahoma have made a request to join the powerhouse Southeastern Conference. A day after the Big 12 schools notified the league that they would not be extending an agreement that binds conference members to 2025, the schools publicly stated for the first time they want to join the SEC.  SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey says his league will consider the request in the “near future.”  The SEC would grow to 16 teams with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, half of which have won at least one national championship in football since 1980. NFL – Bears’ QB balancing act begins with training camp The balancing act for Matt Nagy has begun. The Chicago Bears coach made it clear as players reported Tuesday for training camp why the team is starting veteran quarterback Andy Dalton first before it turns to rookie first-round pick Justin Fields. The season amounts to weighing how much Dalton can win against the potential problems associated with starting a developing rookie like Fields. Nagy realizes the excitement building throughout Chicago to see Fields play, but for training camp, preseason and at least the first game, the Bears know Dalton is the starter. NFL – Rodgers arrives in Green Bay for start of training camp Aaron Rodgers has made it to Green Bay on the eve of the Packers’ first training-camp workout. Rodgers was seen arriving at Lambeau Field on Tuesday morning, the day after NFL Network and ESPN had reported the reigning MVP was closing in on a deal that would keep him with the Packers this season. The Packers open training camp Wednesday. Rodgers hadn’t participated in organized team activities this spring and skipped the Packers’ mandatory minicamp. His return makes the Packers legitimate Super Bowl contenders. NFL – Rivera opens Washington camp frustrated by vaccine hesitancy Ron Rivera opened Washington’s training camp expressing frustration about a lack of vaccinations among players. Rivera says he believes Washington is now over 50% of players fully vaccinated. Only five NFL teams are at less than 70% of players who have either received one vaccination shot or both. The low vaccination rate is one of many questions facing Washington going into camp. It has caused Rivera to wear a mask around unvaccinated players because he says he is immune deficient. Rivera was treated for a form of skin cancer last year. Offensive tackle Cornelius Lucas was placed on the NFL’s COVID-19 reserve list Tuesday. NBA – The play-in tournament officially returning to NBA in 2022 The NBA’s play-in tournament is back for at least one more season. As expected, the league’s board of governors gave approval Tuesday to the plan that would bring back the event in April 2022. The format will be the same as it was this past season: the teams that finish seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th in each conference will play to determine the No. 7 and No. 8 playoff seeds. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had said on multiple occasions in recent weeks that he expected the play-in to return. It was utilized this past season for the first time on an experimental basis. NBA – Former President Obama buys stake in NBA’s Africa business Former U.S. President Barack Obama has bought a stake in the NBA’s Africa business through his foundation. The NBA says Obama will have a minority equity stake in NBA Africa, a new entity set up this year to run all the league’s business on the continent. The NBA adds Obama will use any profits to fund the Obama Foundation’s youth and leadership programs in Africa. Obama has been linked to the NBA’s Africa operations since 2019 but it wasn’t clear until Tuesday’s announcement exactly what his involvement would be. NBA Africa and world body FIBA have combined to set up the first pro basketball league in Africa. It held its inaugural season in May. HSFB – Georgia 15-year-old collapses, dies after football practice A 15-year-old high school football player died after collapsing at the first day of practice amid 97-degree temperatures in middle Georgia.  Bibb County school district officials say Joshua Ivory of Macon’s Southwest High School went into distress Monday, leading coaches to call an ambulance. He later died at a hospital. No cause of death has been announced and an autopsy is planned. MILB – Minor League Baseball – High-A Central Yesterday West Michigan Whitecaps 6, Great Lakes Loons 3 Fort Wayne Tin Caps 3, Lansing Lugnuts 1 Quad Cities River Bandits 4, South Bend Cubs 2 Tonight West Michigan Whitecaps at Great Lakes Loons, 7:05 p.m. Fort Wayne Tin Caps at Lansing Lugnuts, 7:05 p.m. South Bend Cubs at Quad Cities River Bandits, 7:30 p.m. Tokyo 2020 – Summer Olympic Games – Games of the XXXII Olympiad Volleyball – US beats Tunisia 3-1 in men’s volleyball The U.S. men’s volleyball team has improved to 2-1 in pool play at the Olympics by beating Tunisia 3-1.  The Americans bounced back from a loss to the Russians on Wednesday. They knocked off the lowest-ranked team in their group 25-14, 23-25, 25-14, 25-23.  The victory keeps the U.S. in good position to advance to the quarterfinals as one of the top four teams in Pool B. Tunisia has lost all three matches so far in Tokyo. Beach Volleyball – US men, women both win in beach volleyball prelims Americans April Ross and Alix Klineman have guaranteed themselves at least one more beach volleyball match at the Tokyo Olympics. U.S. men Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena helped their chances of making the knockout round as well. The U.S. women beat Spain 21-13, 21-16 for their second straight win. They can do no worse than a three-way tie for first. Dalhausser and Lucena improved to 1-1 in the round robin by beating Brazil’s Alison, the reigning gold medalist, and Alvaro Filho, 24-22, 19-21, 15-13. The Americans will meet Argentina on Thursday. Gymnastics – Russian team topples American powerhouse with Biles out Though the history books may mark Tuesday’s victory with an asterisk due to American star Simone Biles’ early withdrawal, the Russian women’s gymnastics team’s dazzling performance is the result of a concerted transformation since they finished a distant second to the American team at the 2019 World Championship. They beat the Americans by nearly 3.5 points, a significant margin in the sport. Their victory came just a day after the Russian men also won. The country swept the gymnastics team gold medals, among the most coveted at the summer Games.  Biles has also withdrawn from the individual all-around competition. Swimming – "Just proud": Ledecky finally wins gold at Tokyo Olympics Finally, a gold medal in Tokyo for Katie Ledecky. The American star bounced back from the worst finish of her brilliant Olympic career to take the first-ever gold medal in the women’s 1,500-meter freestyle. It wasn’t quite the breeze everyone expected in the metric mile. Ledecky built a big lead right from the start, then worked hard to hold off American teammate Erica Sullivan’s blazing finish. But it was Ledecky touching first in 15 minutes, 37.39 seconds. Sullivan claimed the silver, while the bronze went to Germany’s Sarah Kohler. Ledecky bounced back from a fifth-place showing in the 200 free. Softball – Japan beats US 2-0, turns incredible DP to win softball gold Japan won its second straight Olympic softball gold medal, beating the United States 2-0 in an emotional repeat of their 2008 victory in Beijing that again left the Americans in tears. Yukiko Ueno took a one-hitter into the sixth inning five days after her 39th birthday, and Japan snuffed out an American rally attempt with an acrobatic double play in the sixth inning. Mana Atsumi, the No. 9 batter, had a run-scoring infield hit in the fourth inning and Yamato Fujita lined an RBI single off Abbott in the fifth. Softball will not return to the Olympics until at least 2028. NBC’s Tokyo Olympics viewership gets off to rough start NBC Universal is still waiting to see if there will be a surge of interest in viewership for the Tokyo Summer Olympics. During each of the first three nights of coverage, viewership was down more than 30 percent compared to corresponding nights at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016. NBC’s audience this year was its largest on Sunday night, but that still represented a 43 percent drop from five years ago. Viewing habits for live television have changed dramatically in the past five years, so it’s difficult to determine how much NBC’s Olympics slump has to do with that, and how much with the underwhelming performance in Tokyo.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with (OLYMPIAN!!) Tri Bourne and (not Olympian) Travis Mewhirter is a unique one. Again, we are turning to fan questions, as Mewhirter and our popular new cohost, Savvy Simo, a phenomenal player in her own right, discuss the Tokyo Olympics. We go over virtually everything in Tokyo: - Tri Bourne's strange ride thus far, from a family vacation in Las Vegas to winning now TWO Olympic matches and ensuring a berth into the single-elimination phases. - Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil's all-college battle vs. Latvia's Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka - Is everything pointing towards a gold medal match of April Ross and Alix Klineman vs. Canada's Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan? - What will the rest of Phil Dalhausser's last dance look like? That, and much, much more from the Tokyo Olympic beach volleyball action. ENJOY! *** This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball SHOOTS!

MLB – Major League Baseball Yesterday Minnesota Twins 6, Detroit Tigers 5 – F/10 Kansas City Royals 4, Chicago White Sox 3 Chicago Cubs 6, Cincinnati Reds 5 Twins 6, Tigers 5 – F/10 – Kepler’s RBI single gives Twins 6-5 win vs Tigers in 10 Max Kepler’s RBI single in the bottom of the 10th inning against All-Star closer Gregory Soto gave the Minnesota Twins a 6-5 victory over the Detroit Tigers. Soto walked the bases loaded in the ninth before striking out Willians Astudillo on three pitches, finishing him with a 100 mph fastball. Soto had two outs in the 10th before a walk and Kepler’s ninth career game-ending hit. Robbie Grossman’s pinch-hit, two-run homer tied it for the Tigers with one out in the ninth after Twins All-Star closer Taylor Rogers was pulled from the game with a sprained left middle finger. Royals 4, White Sox 3 – Soler hits 2 HRs, again, as Royals beat White Sox 4-3 Jorge Soler hit two home runs for the second straight game and the Kansas City Royals extended their winning streak to six games with a 4-3 win over the Chicago White Sox on Monday night. Mike Minor (8-8) gave the Royals their fifth quality start in the last six games. He allowed two runs on three hits over six innings. He walked two and struck out seven. Minor’s victory in Milwaukee on July 20 started the Royals’ current winning streak. Scott Barlow worked the final two innings and picked up his sixth save. Cubs 6, Reds 5 – Báez hits bases-loaded single in 9th as Cubs top Reds 6-5 Pinch-hitter Javier Báez hit a bases-loaded single in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Chicago Cubs a 6-5 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Monday night. Anthony Rizzo homered in his second straight game for the Cubs. Joey Votto homered for the third time in three games and drove in three runs for Cincinnati, which dropped its second straight and lost for the seventh time in 10 games. Kyle Farmer added a homer as the Reds’ winning streak against Chicago ended at four. Tonight Cincinnati Reds at Chicago Cubs, 8:05 p.m. Detroit Tigers at Minnesota Twins, 8:10 p.m.                    94.9 WSJM/103.7 Cosy-FM 7:50 Chicago White Sox at Kansas City Royals, 8:10 p.m. MLB – A’s get lefty reliever Chafin from Cubs for 2 minor leaguers The Oakland Athletics fortified their bullpen by acquiring left-hander Andrew Chafin from the Chicago Cubs for two minor leaguers. Chafin was 0-2 with a 2.06 ERA in 43 relief appearances covering 39 1/3 innings for the Cubs this season. The deal was announced following their 6-5 win over Cincinnati and could signal more moves to come from Chicago. The Cubs received outfielder Greg Deichmann and right-hander Daniel Palencia. Oakland is in second place in the AL West and holds the league’s second wild-card spot. The disappointing Cubs are fourth in the NL Central at 50-51 and could be a busy seller before Friday’s trade deadline. NFL – Waiting for Rodgers It’s anyone’s guess as to whether three-time NFL Aaron Rodgers shows up at Green Bay Packers training camp this week. Even the team’s top executive isn’t sure. Packers president/CEO Mark Murphy remains hopeful the quarterback will play for them this season, but says he doesn’t know whether Rodgers will arrive for the start of camp. Murphy’s comments followed an NFL Network report that Rodgers has indicated to people close to him he does plan to play for the Packers this season. ESPN later reported that Rodgers and the Packers were close to an agreement that would include voiding the 2023 season from his contract. The Packers’ camp opens on Wednesday. NFL – Colts Head Coach has COVID despite vaccination Colts coach Frank Reich will miss the start of training camp after testing positive for COVID-19. General manager Chris Ballard says Reich’s test came back late last week and that he has had no symptoms. While Reich is fully vaccinated, Ballard says it is unlikely Reich will return to practice until early next week. NCAA – With eye on SEC, Oklahoma, Texas move toward leaving Big 12 Oklahoma and Texas took the first formal step toward moving to the Southeastern Conference. They notified the Big 12 that they would not be renewing an agreement that binds the league’s members through 2025. The schools sent out a joint statement that made no mention of the SEC and said they intend to honor agreements that give the conference control of the school’s media rights. Those arrangements run concurrent with the Big 12’s television contracts with ESPN and Fox. Texas and Oklahoma have been in discussions with the SEC about joining the league, though neither the two schools nor the powerhouse conference has acknowledged that publicly. MILB – Minor League Baseball – High-A Central Yesterday No games tonight Tonight West Michigan Whitecaps at Great Lakes Loons, 7:05 p.m. Fort Wayne Tin Caps at Lansing Lugnuts, 7:05 p.m. South Bend Cubs at Quad Cities River Bandits, 7:30 p.m. Tokyo 2020 – Summer Olympic Games – Games of the XXXII Olympiad Basketball – US women win 50th straight Olympic game over Nigeria A’ja Wilson had 19 points and 13 rebounds in her Olympic debut to help the U.S. beat Nigeria 81-72 in the opener for both teams. The win was the Americans’ 50th consecutive victory in the Olympics dating back to a loss in the semifinals of the 1992 Barcelona Games. Diana Taurasi, who was playing in her first game in nearly a month after suffering a hip injury, has competed in the last 33 of those victories to set a record for most games in the Olympics. Ezinne Kalu scored 16 to lead Nigeria. Swimming – Alaskan swimmer wins gold Alaska, of all places, has an Olympic champion at the pool. Seventeen-year-old Lydia Jacoby gave the United States a victory in the women’s 100-meter breaststroke, knocking off defending champion and teammate Lilly King. Jacoby was the first swimmer from the Arctic state ever to make the U.S. Olympic swimming team. Now she’s heading back to her hometown of Seward, Alaska, with a gold medal. South Africa’s Tatjana Schoenmaker claimed the silver while King settled for bronze. Jacoby’s stunning win salvaged what had been a disappointing morning for the U.S. team, which had only managed a pair of bronzes before the teen came through. Swimming – US streak in 100m backstroke ends For the first time since 1992, the American men have lost a backstroke race at the Olympic pool. Russia swept the top two spots in the 100-meter back, with Evgeny Rylov claiming the gold medal in 51.98 seconds and teammate Kliment Kolesnikov taking the silver in 52.00. Defending Olympic champion Ryan Murphy settled for the bronze in 52.19. Beach Volleyball – Ross/Klineman win 16th straight The American “A-Team” of April Ross and Alix Klineman have guaranteed themselves at least one more beach volleyball match by beating Spain 21-13, 21-16 for their second straight win. With one more game in the preliminaries left, they can do no worse than a three-way tie for first. The deadlock would be broken during a “lucky loser” matchup after the round-robin. Tennis – Naomi Osaka eliminated from Tokyo Olympics tennis tournament Japan’s Naomi Osaka lost to former French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic 6-1, 6-4 in the third round of the Olympic women’s tennis tournament. The 42nd-ranked Vondrousova produced a series of drop-shot winners and other crafty shots that drew Osaka out of her comfort zone. Volleyball – US women’s volleyball hands China 2nd straight loss The expected Olympic showdown between the top two women’s volleyball teams in the world turned out to be a one-sided affair. The U.S. women swept defending gold medalist China 29-27, 25-22, 25-21 in a pool-play match that left the Americans at the top of Pool B and the Chinese seeking to win their first set of the tournament after two straight sweeps to open the Games. China was also swept by Turkey in the opener but showed five years ago in Rio de Janeiro how little the pool-play matches can mean after losing three of five of them before rallying to win gold. Gymnastics – Biles tries to lead Team USA to 3rd consecutive gold medal Simone Biles and Team USA seek their third consecutive gold medal in women’s gymnastics in Tuesday’s team final. The Americans trail the Russian Olympic Committee. Biles is set to compete in all five events. In swimming, Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel return to the pool with Ledecky seeking a second straight gold medal in the women’s 200-meter freestyle and a later attempt to win the Olympic debut of the women’s 1,500-meter freestyle. The U.S. women’s soccer team plays its final match in group stage play and the US men’s basketball team plays Iran while seeking its 1st win. Tokyo Olympic flame is the first powered by hydrogen Inspired by the sun, the Tokyo Olympic cauldron is designed to be better for the planet. The flame at Tokyo’s National Stadium and another cauldron burning along the waterfront near Tokyo Bay throughout the games will be sustained in part by hydrogen, the first time the clean fuel source will be used to power an Olympic fire. Previous flames have usually run on propane, although magnesium, gunpowder, resin and olive oil have also been used since the first modern cauldron was lit for the Amsterdam Games in 1928. The torch relay was introduced eight years later for Berlin. Olympic broadcasters curb sexual images of female athletes Each Olympics aims to set the highest level of television standards. The head of broadcasting at the Tokyo Games wants to reach this goal by banishing overly sexualized images of female athletes. A wider Olympic program targets gender equity on the field of play and on screen. One mantra for broadcasters is “sport appeal, not sex appeal.” Olympic Broadcasting Services chief executive Yiannis Exarchos says viewers will no longer see the kind of close-ups on women’s bodies they might have seen at past Olympics. It comes as more female athletes oppose wearing uniforms they believe exploits their sexuality. NBC mum on Chinese complaints about map during ceremony NBC is not responding to complaints from China over how the network depicted the country’s map when its athletes marched in the opening ceremony at the Tokyo Olympics. The Chinese consulate in New York and several social media accounts complained because the map showed by NBC did not depict disputed territories like the island of Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province. The issue is worth watching since NBC Universal is contracted to broadcast and stream next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing. The consulate general says NBC “harmed the dignity and emotions of the Chinese people.” Softball – Lawrie gets win, Canada beats Mexico 3-2 for softball bronze Canada won its first Olympic medal in softball, taking the bronze with a 3-2 win over Mexico on behind 2 1/3 innings of scoreless, one-hit relief from Danielle Lawrie, the sister of former major leaguer Brett Lawrie. Lawrie is a veteran of Canada’s 2008 Olympic team and the 2009 and ’10 USA college player of the year at the University of Washington. She relieved with runners at the corners and retired Victoria Vidales on a groundout. Lawrie struck out four, fanning Brittany Cervantes to end it. Kelsey Harshman broke a 2-2 tie in the fifth with a sacrifice fly. Tropical storm to bring rain, wind, waves to northeast Japan An offshore tropical storm brought wind and rain to the Tokyo region and affected some Olympic events Tuesday as it headed toward northeastern Japan. Stormier conditions were forecast north of the capital in advance of Nepartak making landfall around midday Wednesday. The Japan Meteorological Agency says the tropical storm has winds of 44 mph that will weaken before landfall. Storm and high wave warnings were issued for the coastal areas of Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. Super-express train services were to be suspended from Tuesday evening possibly until Wednesday morning.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter is our monthly fan-question episode, though we didn't actually take any specific fan questions, as all of them centered on two topics only: Who is going to win the Olympics? What is Bally's purchase of AVP going to do for the sport of beach volleyball? Now, before we begin: Savvy Simo and Mewhirter recorded this episode late Tuesday night. We were aware that Taylor Crabb had tested positive for COVID, and that Tri Bourne was on a flight bound for Tokyo. However, at the time, the information wasn't public, and, per Bourne's request, SANDCAST was not going to be the one to break that news. So we didn't chat about it, and we're still hoping Crabb can get a negative test in time to compete. That said, what we do discuss on this episode includes: - Bally's purchase of the AVP, and the potential upside a casino with deep pockets can bring to the sport of beach volleyball - Why April Ross and Alix Klineman are the favorites to win gold in Tokyo - Why Ahmed Tijan and Cherif Samba, and not Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, are the favorites to win gold in Tokyo - Much more on the Olympic Games - The exciting AVP Next Gold event in Atlantic City - And, as always, much, much more. ENJOY! *** This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball, makers of the absolute best balls in the game, hands down. You can get a 20-percent discount using our code, SANDCAST-20! https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball This episode is also brought to you by Chasing Gold, a new non-profit founded by Matt Callahan and SANDCAST host Travis Mewhirter, aimed at funding aspiring Olympians to relieve the financial burden of traveling around the world. Read more and donate today at www.chasinggold.org! SHOOTS!

Beach volleyball phenom Alix Klineman is not embarrassed to talk about birth control and how she sustains peak athletic performance throughout her menstrual cycleHear from:Alix KlinemanApril Ross (two-time Olympic medalist and Alix's partner)Teddy Purcell (former NHL player and Alix's boyfriend)Dr. Georgie Bruivels (Research Scientist and Female Athlete Lead at ORRECO)Privacy Policy and California Privacy Notice.

Technical Director at Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and composer Eric Romani talks about his enjoyment playing volleyball despite the harsh Minnesotan winters. Some of his favorite 2 Vs 2 professional players are Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb for Mens and April Ross and Alix Klineman for Women.  Follow Eric at www.ericromani.bandcamp.com Support this podcast at www.patreon.com/haydnmusicstand and visit our social media pages @haydnmusicstand. Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1iFJSHos3tN6kQid0BRqiN?si=bwOA9EynTJic7zBk0xDp6A --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/haydnmusicstand/support

On this week’s Quest for Gold… The U-23 US Men’s Soccer team looks to qualify a bid for Tokyo at Concacaf. April Ross and Alix Klineman grab some big points as they look to qualify a bid for Beach Volleyball. U.S. Senator Mitt Romney weighs in on calls for the U.S. to boycott the upcoming […]

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Angie Akers, the AVP and FIVB Rookie of the Year as a player and the new coach of April Ross and Alix Klineman.  On this episode, we discuss: - Akers' itinerant journey into beach volleyball, from road running to working for the Lehman Brothers to kickboxing to the beach - Her experience coaching for the Netherlands for the previous six years - How she fell into a training group with John Speraw, Jeff Nygaard, and John Hyden as her first training partners - Compiling an accomplished beach career despite not playing beach volleyball until she was 26 - How she became April Ross and Alix Klineman's new coach - A fun training camp to Brazil, and what's next for the A-Team This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love! This episode is also brought to you by Kamena Outdoor! Dave Kamena is a longtime beach volleyball enthusiast and has perfected his outdoor backpack over the previous 17 YEARS! It makes a great Christmas present, or just a great present for yourself. Head over to Kamena Outdoor to get your backpack today! We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates! If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game! Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you. SHOOTS!

-Skill differences between indoor and beach-Coaching and culture differences-Not being afraid to make mistakes Get CYBO the book! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1098630904Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/coachyourbrainsout

-Learning from failures-Transitioning from indoor to beach-Differences between indoor and beachGet CYBO the book! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1098630904Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/coachyourbrainsout

On this episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, the hosts discuss the first of the AVP Champions Cup Series, the Monster Hydro Cup.  Bourne and his partner, Trevor Crabb, finished third in the event, which was won by Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena on the men's side, and April Ross and Alix Klineman on the women's.  In this episode, Bourne and Mewhirter discuss: - How it felt to be competing again for Bourne, who hasn't played many AVPs in the past few years.  - How the site setup in Long Beach was, and playing without fans.  - What players performed the best over the weekend, including: Skylar del Sol, Sara Hughes and Brandie Wilkerson, Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes, Dalhausser and Lucena, Traci Callahan and Crissy Jones.  - The improvement Bourne and Crabb have had on defense.  - What the rest of this three-week sprint will look like.    Thanks, as always, for listening to the show! This show is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. To get a 20-percent discount on the best volleyball in the sport, head over to Wilson and use the code, Sandcast-20 for 20-percent off!

Madison and Riley McKibbin can still remember -- with much amusement, as memories go – one of their first disasters as producers of beach volleyball videos on their eponymous YouTube channel. Not that it seemed like a disaster at the time – they rarely do. Riley probably thought it was a stroke of genius when the wind had muffled up the sound of one of those early videos, and rather than redo it, he simply recorded a voiceover, trying to match his cadence on screen. “You can really tell,” Madison said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “It’s like an old, bad movie, like they’re speaking English words and it’s Japanese.” “There were some bad decisions that were made for sure,” Riley added, laughing.  That’s the beautiful thing about being first in an industry with a large fanbase and what was at the time, and still sort of it, an almost entirely untouched gold mine of digital media: Even when bad decisions were made, they didn’t seem bad at the time. They seemed innovative, because the crux of their content was innovative, something that had never really been done before. When the McKibbins were initially tinkering with the notion of retiring from indoor volleyball, which they played professionally overseas – Madison finished in Greece, Riley in Italy – and switching to beach, they did what anybody in this current generation would do: They searched YouTube. They found what nobody in any future generation will now find: Little to nothing. Nothing that was great, anyway. There were some out there. But Riley, now 31 and coming off a career-best AVP season, knew he had found a hole. Why he knew that he and Madison thought they could be the answers to that problem is still a mystery to them. Riley had no prior experience editing film. Madison had little, though he did have a camera. An early issue there was that Riley couldn’t even turn the thing on. In spite of that, Riley said, “we somehow thought we could fill that void.” They have. And they have done it to such a spectacular degree because the foundation of virtually every video posted on The McKibbin Brothers YouTube channel has remained the same, whether it’s a hilarious voiceover edit, a tutorial on jumpserving, or a supremely well-done vlog: They’re telling stories that ought to be told. “The thing is,” Madison says in their video following filming the 2020 AVP Media Day, “all these people aren’t just beach volleyball players. They have these passions outside of beach volleyball, which are so differentiating, so spread out all over the place, which makes them them, sometimes these volleyball questions – they get asked every single Media Day.” They do things different. They don’t ask Alix Klineman what it’s like to transition from indoor to beach. They get her rolling on cooking, and food, to the point that Klineman, one of the more reticent individuals on Tour, actually asked the McKibbins to let her talk more. “Actually, I have one more,” she said. “I can really just keep going.” Nobody had ever gotten that story, because nobody had ever bothered. The McKibbins saw the void there. They were unqualified to fill that void. They didn’t care. They filled it anyway. “It’s been a long learning process and during that learning process we’ve discovered different avenues we could take it,” Riley said. “So it moved just from doing beach volleyball tutorials to workout videos to some blogs to some mini documentary kind of videos. It’s been a pretty crazy, great learning experience.” They’ve discovered the videos that are most fulfilling to them. The slow-motion replays of matches throughout the season are entertaining, and there is some benefit there, but there isn’t character building. No storytelling. There isn’t the reward of stringing together a narrative, drawing new fans into this sport, as a Formula One docuseries called “Drive to Survive” did for them. “That’s something me and Riley realized about our content recently,” Madison said. “The ones we’ve been super excited for, you can see it. The ones where we’re like ‘meh’ you can tell as a viewer.” “It’s almost like YouTube knows how much energy and how excited we are about the videos that we’re making,” Riley said. “When we’re super excited about a project, the views show it. When we’re throwing up filler content to hit that Wednesday quota, YouTube knows: ‘Nope, we’re punishing you. You only put in 75 percent effort’ and we’re like ‘Dammit!’” They’re back to their metaphorical drawing boards. They couldn’t elaborate on the specificity of future projects, because they don't know the exact direction of them just yet. There are vague ideas, visions – something big out there. They just don’t know precisely what it is. “Our main goal is to start innovating again,” Riley said. “I think one of the reasons we had such great success in the very beginning was because we spent a lot of time writing and trying to make the content at least somewhat entertaining.” They’ve accomplished that much. They’ve filled one void, and they’ll surely find more as their abilities evolve and the perimeters of their limits as storytellers and creators expand. There isn’t a team in beach volleyball better suited to do it.

On Tuesday morning, what seemed to be the inevitable alas became a reality: The 2020 Olympic Games were postponed, to sometime in 2021. For some, it’s heartbreaking. “I can understand why other people are devastated,” said Sarah Sponcil, who is third in the Olympic race with Kelly Claes. “They waited literally four years and now they have to wait five.” Notice that Sponcil said “others” when mentioning those who are devastated. For some, the Olympic postponement is devastating. For others, it’s a blessing not even in disguise: It’s just a blessing. This week on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, we discussed, among a number of covid-19-related topics – is there anything else to discuss at this point, anyway? – how each team in the Olympic race could benefit or set them back from the postponement. We dug into how, depending on the FIVB schedule and any changes the IOC makes regarding the qualification process, the postponement could put additional teams in the race. Here’s a team by team breakdown of the impact the postponement could have.   Women April Ross, Alix Klineman U.S.A. rank: 1 Points: 8,760 This one is difficult to pin down whether it hurts or benefits. On the one hand, Ross and Klineman were coming off their best season together, with five AVP finals in five tournaments and three wins on the world tour. They could have continued that upwards trajectory all the way to Tokyo. On the other hand, it gives Klineman another year to develop on the beach, which she has done at such a rate you’d be forgiven to think she hasn’t been playing on the AVP her entire volleyball career. It’s a bit neutral for these two, who are still all but a lock to go to Tokyo, no matter what year the Games are held. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry to play this year as it was, as they decided not to play in the Cancun four-star that was eventually cancelled, so perhaps this will be a good rest period to heal up the nagging injuries that build up. Until then, you can find Ross going viral with what has become the April Ross Challenge.   Kerri Walsh Jennings, Brooke Sweat U.S.A. rank: 2 Points: 6,960 The immediate reaction when thinking of these two is that it would have to negatively impact them. But the more one would think about it, the more that might not be entirely accurate. Yes, Walsh Jennings and Sweat are on the older side of the athletic spectrum, at 41 and 33 years old, respectively. Yes, they have quite a list of injuries and surgeries on the ledger. But Sponcil said it best: “Kerri is a machine,” she said on Tuesday. “She’s just going to keep going all out.” If there is one athlete in the world who can take this and benefit from it, it might be Walsh Jennings, whose three gold medals and five Olympic appearances did not come by accident. That, and she gets time at home, with her family, when she would otherwise be circumnavigating the world.   Sarah Sponcil, Kelly Claes U.S.A. rank: 3 Points: 6,640 There are two teams that I really don’t see any downside to this: Sponcil and Claes, and Kelley Larsen and Emily Stockman. For these two, it’s all upside. “Everyone’s been asking how we feel about it and I feel great because the last year I’ve just been like ‘Ok, let’s get as many points as we can, let’s pass Kerri, it’s crunch time,’” Sponcil said. “It would have been crunch time right now and now I have the time to process the opportunity I have in front of me. I’m trying my hardest to slow down and be like ‘Whoa this is an amazing opportunity having another year to get experience, to slow down a little bit, and take it all in.’ It’s the best thing for our team and for me personally.” It gives them more time to develop, both as players and professionals, and it allows them, as Sponcil mentioned, to finally slow down. Catch a breath. Sleep for a change. Sponcil has been competing at a breakneck pace for the previous few years, going from UCLA to the AVP then back to UCLA straight into the Olympic race. A break could be just what she needed. It could be exactly what the team needed.   Kelley Larsen, Emily Stockman U.S.A. rank: 4 Points: 6,080 It is positively bananas that the fourth-ranked U.S. team is also the seventh-ranked team on the planet. America is deep. When you’re as good as Stockman and Larsen are, and you’re behind in the race, time and more events are what you need, and time and hopefully more events is what they’ll get. If they have a dozen more events to climb the ladder and take the second American spot, as they could, depending when the FIVB reschedules its laundry list of postponed events, they could very well do so. Their win in Warsaw proved they can compete with any team in the world. They just need some more time to do so. Now, they might have that time.   Men Taylor Crabb, Jake Gibb U.S.A. rank: 1 Points: 6,680 It is hard to imagine how another year added to Gibb’s career would be a positive for these two, but it’s also hard to imagine how Gibb played some of his best volleyball at age 43 as he did in 2019. He, like Phil Dalhausser and John Hyden, have hoarded a gallon from the fountain of youth and just continue to defy athletic norms. For Crabb, it’s just another year to get better. With his trajectory the way it is – a sharp incline upwards – the postponement isn’t going to do any harm. Perhaps this will be a useful rest period for Gibb, a bit of a sabbatical before one final charge in 2021.   Tri Bourne, Trevor Crabb U.S.A. rank: 2 Points: 6,360 Like Sponcil and Claes, and Larsen and Stockman, this is another team where it’s almost only upside. They held a slim lead over Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena for the second spot, slim enough where it was basically a tie. But now Bourne and Crabb have another year to dial in their team dynamic, which both admit they’re only just beginning to figure out. Bourne can dial in his world-class blocking again, while both can dig into the nuances of defense and different roles in transition. It’s inconvenient for anyone to have to wait another year, but as this is this only team where age is not a factor at all, there isn’t much downside to the postponement for Bourne and Crabb.   Phil Dalhausser, Nick Lucena U.S.A. rank: 3 Points: 5,840 It is impossible to say how this will impact Dalhausser and Lucena. Dalhausser has readily admitted that Tokyo was it for him. Then it was onto family time and working at his new facility in Orlando, Fla. This news obviously pushes that timeline back. Like Walsh Jennings, though, it could just mean more time at home with their families for what could be the remainder of the year. They live close enough to one another that practicing won’t be a burden. If there isn’t another meaningful event until, say, August, maybe later, that’s another five months at home they otherwise wouldn’t have had. It could be exactly what they need, or it could be difficult to sustain the motivation needed to make an Olympic push for another year and a half. Time will only tell. And time is exactly what we have in abundance.

The lead was gone, momentum completely flipped, and Melissa Humana-Paredes was, in her own words, crapping her pants.   That’s what she said to her partner after their 14-10 lead in the third set of the World Championship semifinals had disappeared. Nobody wants to be in that situation. Nobody asks to miss on four match points of the game’s biggest stage. And yet it was perhaps the most critical moment of the partnership for the team that would finish the 2019 season ranked No. 1 in the world. “Fourteen-fourteen was a really pivotal moment for Sarah and I because they had gotten three straight aces,” Humana-Paredes said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “They weren’t even rallies. She had gotten an ace down the sideline, ace down the seam, it was ‘Wow.’ There was no time to think about anything, but she was able to see where I was mentally and she was able to relate to me and say ‘I’m a little nervous too. This is not ideal.’ Vulnerability is a beautiful thing and is such a necessary thing in beach volleyball. We’re out there and our weaknesses are exposed. There’s no one else to come in for you. You gotta figure it out, just you and your partner, so in that moment, when you express that vulnerability to your partner, and she shows up for you, she’s like ‘You know what, me too, but you got this.’ “She turned to me and she said ‘They’re going to serve you. You’re going to pass it, I’m going to set you, and you’re going to side out, because that’s what you can do.’ I was like ‘Wow, she’s really confident in you. Step up to the plate Mel.’ That was a turning point for us to grit up.” Humana-Paredes and Pavan would go on to win that semifinal over Switzerland’s Nina Betschart and Tanja Huberli, 19-17 in the third set, which would precede a 23-21, 23-21 epic of a final victory over April Ross and Alix Klineman. It became a theme for the season for the Canadians: When things were tight, when they were down, they just found a way to win. They “gritted up,” and in doing so, they only, oh, qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, became the first Canadian team to hold a World Champion title, cemented themselves on the Manhattan Beach Pier. They win gold on the road again in Vienna and at home in Edmonton. They finished their season fittingly: On a high, with a first in Hawai’i.   All because, Humana-Paredes said, they found the ability to “grit up.” “Heading into World Champs, we weren’t feeling our best,” Humana-Paredes said. “We were coming off a couple rough finishes in Warsaw and Ostrava and we weren’t playing super clean ball. Even in the World Champs, even in pool play, they were gnarly, gritty games. We easily could have lost them. Even some games in our playoffs, we easily could have lost them, but we really, really were working hard, and were gritty and were resilient. I think that’s what the 2019 season was: full on grit and heart. It was like that for every tournament. Nothing came easy, and we just worked for it. We’re going into this season with that same mentality.” They’ll need it, too. This year, like no other, Humana-Paredes and Pavan will be the team everyone is looking to knock down. They’ve had the metaphorical target on their back before, following the brilliant 2017 season that finished with them ranked second in the world. “We were still in that period while having these new standards and expectations that everyone else was also having of us and to be honest I don’t think we handled it very well,” Humana-Paredes said of the 2018 season. “It was a bit of a roller coaster. We did win some tournaments. We won the Commonwealth Games, we won Gstaad, we won China, but we also had a couple uncharacteristic finishes. We had a couple seventeenths, and it was a huge roller coaster. We sat down at the end of the year and looked at what we accomplished and it was a lot better than it felt. We felt like we dropped the ball but when we looked back at our results we weren’t far from the goals we had set for ourselves. When you’re in it, you can be so hard on yourself and you don’t recognize what you’re accomplishing along the way. When you reflect back on the season, maybe we were too hard on ourselves, because look at what we did. So we took that mindset into this last season in 2019 which was probably our best season.” It may, in fact, be the most accomplished single season in Canadian beach history. In four months, Humana-Paredes and Pavan will have the opportunity to continue authoring history for the Canadian federation. They know the impact winning an Olympic medal would have on the Canadian beach community. They’ve seen it before, after World Champs, when dozens of girls reached out to let them know that they were the reason they were picking up beach.   “We saw how it affected Canada and how they really took notice, and beach volleyball started to grow,” Humana-Paredes said. “We saw how it affected the growing generation in Canada for beach volleyball, which is ultimately what we want to do. We want to inspire the next generation, and the amount of messages we got from parents and kids saying ‘I want to start playing beach volleyball because of this’ who had never been in the sport and now want to take it up, that just makes it so much more valuable. “It helped put things in perspective when we were feeling so low. When we got results that we were disappointed with and feeling those emotions, seeing what we had done goes beyond a week after week result. We want to leave a legacy in the sport for ourselves and I think that’s what we usually have to come back to when we’re in the thick of it because sometimes we get carried away with the result and the performance and we need to realize that we’re still making an impact and that is ultimately what we want to do.” For now, they’ll work on their Olympic seeding. They’ll clean up the small fixes they need to make. They will, just as they did last year, “grit up.”  

The coronavirus may be decimating the global and American stock markets, but one place you won’t find its impact is the annual SANDCAST Beach Volleyball Stocks to Buy. This week, as we did in 2019, Tri Bourne and I broke down the top up and coming prospects of the season as our stocks to buy this year. I’m only writing about 10 – five men, five women – so to find the rest, you can listen to our podcast, which also answered fan questions, discussed the new partnerships being formed, and talked a little college volley.   Men’s stocks to buy Miles Partain How good is Miles Partain? He already has his own emoji among the beach volleyball community. He's emoji good. You can always identify when Partain is at a practice, as any video of him playing will include the baby emoji, referring to him as “baby Miles,” whereas Miles Evans would be the not so baby Miles. Baby or not, the 18-year-old UCLA recruit’s fifth-place finish in Chicago was no fluke. He’s spent the off-season training with the USA Volleyball groups, and has been called up into similarly high-level practices when he isn’t.  Andy Benesh/Eric Beranek By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the Beranekquake that’s gone viral on social media, the one where he takes a back shoot set from his new partner, Benesh, and pounds it somewhere to Mexico. Granted, there was no defense, and their only tournament to date ended with a second in Treasure Island to Raffe Paulis and Ricardo, but this is a young, up-and-coming team with loads of potential and, better yet, dedication. They have a coach and what appears to be an organized, productive off-season heading into what could be a breakout year for both.  Kyle Friend Last year was Friend’s first as a defender, and it was also the best of his career. After relieving himself of blocking duties, he scooped up Duncan Budinger and qualified in five of seven tournaments, tying a career-high ninth in Austin. Like Partain, Friend has been a regular in the USAV training sessions, and with a year of defending under his belt, his ceiling is only getting higher. Whether he gets pulled up by a bigger blocker or must begin again in the qualifiers remains to be seen, but he'll be a regular in the main draw this year.  Dave Palm Palm alas made his AVP breakthrough last season, a much anticipated one after winning five NVL events and making an additional seven finals in four seasons. He and Dylan Maarek, who’s also having a terrific off-season, qualified in Hermosa Beach, stunning Chaim Schalk and Jeremy Casebeer in the second round on stadium court. He’s already straight into AVP Huntington Beach after winning Big Shots in Atlantic City this past fall with JM Plummer, another notable to watch this season, so he’ll have a big stage at the beginning of the season. Steve Roschitz/Pete Connole Connole had only won two AVP qualifier matches prior to last season. Then came New York, when, as the 20 seed in the qualifier, Roschitz and Connole engineered upsets over Andy Benesh and Adam Roberts, Maddison and Riley McKibbin, and Kyle Radde and Brad Connors. So quick was their improvement that by the end of the season, it’s possible that none of those wins could be labeled as an upset. They were straight into Manhattan and qualified again in Chicago, making more main draws than Connole had previously won qualifier matches. Other notables: DR Vander Meer John Schwengel Tim Brewster Branden Clemens Kevin Villela JM Plummer Ben Vaught Logan Webber Chris Austin Earl Schultz Jake Urrutia Silila Tucker Kacey Losik   Women’s stocks to buy Kelly Reeves/Terese Cannon I’m big on this team this year, in large part because I think a breakout has been due for Kelly Reeves for a few years and it seems the pieces are coming in place for it. In just four events together as partners, the two have already logged a third at the Manhattan Beach Open, where their only losses were to Alix Klineman and April Ross and Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan; a ninth in Hawai’i; and a silver medal at the Siem Reap two-star. That is a heck of a start to a partnership that has upside, youth, hunger, and a strong all-around skill set. Corinne Quiggle/Falyn Fonoimoana Putting too much weight in early results can be a dangerous thing to do sometimes. The honeymoon phase is a real thing. But sometimes they can also be promising indicators, and the two NORCECAs that Quiggle and Fonoimoana have played were won in nearly flawless fashion, with just a single set dropped, and that includes the qualifiers they needed to play as well. Heading into 2020, they’ll both benefit from a full season as professionals under their belt and an entire off-season of training together. Geena Urango/Emily Hartong If I had any money to bet – I don’t, because weddings are expensive – and there was someone to take my bet on a team this season this would be the one. Partly because a tumultuous year would have driven the price of the Urango-Hartong stock way down, and therefore the value has the potential to jump quite high, but also because this is just a legitimately really good team that can do loads of great things. Urango’s been in multiple finals. She knows how to get it done. Hartong was still adjusting to the beach (and snow, and four-on-four) last year, and she still more than doubled her prize money from 2018. I don’t think they’re ready to win an AVP just yet, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them making a push to a Sunday here and there. Traci Callahan Want to know why I believe in Traci Callahan? Because Mykel Jenkins, Tri Bourne’s trainer, believes in Callahan, and he hardly believes in anybody. When he compliments someone, it’s a very real, genuine compliment, and he was enamored with Callahan’s work ethic. She spent her off-season working with Evie Matthews, and was rewarded with a fifth at the Siem Reap two-star with Crissy Jones, where they beat eventual gold medalists Sara Hughes and Lauren Fendrick. This is just the start for Callahan.  Crissy Jones Speaking of Jones, she’s an easy one to peg for this list. Currently a graduate student at her alma mater, Cal Poly, Jones was one of the most delightful stories of the season in 2019, making one heck of an end-of-year push with Zana Muno (she’d be on here too, but I don’t know if they’re playing together, and Muno's stock is already awfully high). A third in Hermosa Beach was followed by three consecutive top-10 finishes, all of which preceded the aforementioned fifth place in Cambodia.   Other notables: Delaney Mewhirter/Katie Spieler Megan Rice Katie Hogan Mackenzie Ponnet Zana Muno Molly Turner Carly Wopat Tory Paranagua Jess Gaffney Macy Jerger Bre Moreland

It’s a late Tuesday morning, and Falyn Fonoimoana has brought the goods again. She’s even brought some freshly baked banana bread, for her coaches, Arthur Carvahlo and Pompilio Mercadante, who smiles and says that happiness is bread and sugar. Happiness is a great many things for the 27-year-old Fonoimoana. It’s getting a big kill and celebrating it loudly, with a beat of the chest. It’s putting powdered-sugar boot prints for her 7-year-old son, Tavoi, on Christmas morning, showing physical evidence that Santa came. It’s ensuring that Nicolette Martin, all blonde hair and blue eyes, makes it through a throng of fans in Aguascalientes, Mexico. It’s talking a little trash, discovering the sassy side of her new partner, Corinne Quiggle. Mostly, though, happiness for Fonoimoana comes from being, simply, Mama Falyn. “Everyone calls me mama for a reason,” Fonoimoana said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I teach recovery, I bring magnesium, they used to make fun of me because I bring a huge suitcase where it’s all the remedies for A, B, C, D that could happen while you’re traveling. I try to be, ‘Hey, I have all this stuff here, if you need it.’ It all comes from things that I’ve experienced and it comes out of love. I love all of my partners that I’ve experienced. I’m invested.” Most on the beach scene have only seen this side of Fonoimoana, the loving, caring, doting partner who has a track record of bringing out the best in everyone she plays with. She is quick to admit this wasn’t always the case. The niece of both an Olympic butterfly swimmer and an Olympic gold medalist on the beach, Fonoimoana was, not surprisingly, one of the best on every team she ever played. She won a state and national championship at Mira Costa as a freshman, burying balls alongside Alix Klineman, and over the next four years she established herself as the No. 1 ranked high school player in the country. As a freshman at USC, she started in 31 of 34 matches, finishing second on the team in kills. This 19-year-old Fonoimoana, however, was not the one who brings magnesium and electrolytes and gluten-free banana bread to practice. This Falyn Fonoimoana was, by her own admission, “a crappy teammate when I was young.” And then, unexpectedly, wonderfully, life happened. Fonoimoana became pregnant with the boy that would change her life in all of the best ways motherhood can change an athlete of prodigious talent and limitless future and, somehow, almost unbelievably, none of the worst. It wasn’t her body that underwent the most lasting of changes – she was working out within five days of giving birth – but her mindset. “I think that was a huge part of not just growing up but finding who I am as a person and who I wanted to be,” she said. “Being young and volleyball just being everything for me, I didn’t know what life outside volleyball was. It helped me learn what kind of parent, what kind of woman I wanted to be, what kind of spouse, like these are all things that came to fruition once it happened because I have to show him who he wants to be through my actions, and I wanted it to always be positive and I wanted him to see those organic. “I’m still young, I’m only 27, but I’m really happy with where I am. I love my life, I get to help people, and I get to learn and be open minded about people. Thank God he gave me my son because mentally, he made me ten times stronger, to make me more empathetic, to make me more personable, to be able to slow down and not just think ‘go, go, go’ and really appreciate daily life. I owe my son the world because he makes me be better.” She extended her indoor career another five years, competing in Puerto Rico, Poland, and on the 2015 U.S. Pan American Games team that won gold, until she had to return home full-time to retain custody of Tavoi. The career move was not an unwelcome one. Fonoimoana had always known that beach was the long game. Being a full-time mom in the United States simply expedited her path. As it has gone throughout her athletic life, it didn’t take long for Fonoimoana to adjust. She qualified in six of seven AVPs in 2018 with Alexa Strange and Pri Piantadosi-Lima, won a NORCECA in Punta Cana with Molly Turner, with whom she also took third in p1440 Huntington Beach. In the second tournament of 2019, she made her first Sunday, finishing third in Austin with Martin. She piled up five more NORCECA medals, the final two of which were gold, with Quiggle, putting her on the international route she has set her goals on this upcoming year. “I knew that I wanted to play FIVB, but I was new to the beach game, I needed to figure it out,” she said. “My first year it was ‘Ok, get your feet wet with the AVP. Figure that out. Figure out the travel, how to get it paid for. If you can get to FIVBs, great, if not, get to as many internationals as you can.’ This year I want to get into three- and four-stars. “I’ve watched my uncle [Eric Fonoimoana] and several other family members go through this exact same thing and I feel like I have enough experience on my back that I know I can get my feet wet and see where I am. “If I need to, I’ll choose an FIVB over an AVP right now because I need to push myself and see different kinds of volleyball. You need to see every level, you need to see Olympians, you need to get your butt kicked.” How much Fonoimoana will get her butt kicked remains to be seen. It’s not something that has happened much over the course of her 27 years, but she’s open to the possibility. She knows that it’s the right path, not necessarily the easiest one and that, above all, it’s the example she wants to set for her 7-year-old boy that has taken quite a bit after mom.   “I want him to be better than me,” she said. “I want him to have more opportunity than me. I have to build that path and if I show that discipline, everything I do in that aspect is for him. My why is Tavoi. I teach him all the time it’s free to be kind.”

  There is a moment before every practice that is so innocuous, so easy to forget that it’s not all that uncommon for teams to go about practicing without remembering it at all: putting up the antennas. And yet it is that moment that Kelly Reeves loves – or, in her vernacular, “gets jazzed about” –as much as she loves anything, and allow us to inform you early in this story that Kelly Reeves loves a great many things. But before she can discuss how much she loves playing volleyball, how jazzed she gets about this game, how she loves the long rallies, getting a scoop on a hard-driven, or the feeling of her lungs searing at the end of a long, three-set match, she wants you to know how much she loves putting up those antennas each morning. “That’s my moment before practice, setting up the antennas,” Reeves said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “It’s like ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’ People overlook that. I always set the antennas up, but that’s something I just enjoy. I just look around at the bay and it’s like ‘Wow, life’s pretty good.’ It’s just what I do and I’m like ‘I love being here.’” It’s possible that Reeves, who won a national championship indoors at UCLA before starting her professional career on the beach, loves more aspects of volleyball, and life, than anyone you’ve met. Workouts that leave her heaving, worn out, walking gingerly out of the gym? Loves them. Rallies – even the ones she loses – that leave her caked in sand, sweaty, out of breath? Loves them. Heck, the 27-year-old even loved, in a weird sort of way, getting roofed by Alix Klineman on match point in the quarterfinals of the Manhattan Beach Open.  “It was just so surreal playing against the top teams in the world like ‘What? This is awesome!’ What a fun experience,” said Reeves, who finished a career-high third in Manhattan with Terese Cannon, losing only to April Ross and Klineman and Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan. “And, obviously, we lost to both of those teams, and I give Alix a little [crap] because I got absolutely roofed on match point. I was like ‘Either way I’m going in to crank it and see what happens’ and there’s a photo of Alix just reaching her hand, dink, and I’m like ‘C’mon! You couldn’t give me just one?’ But I respect both of those teams and it’s elite volleyball, it’s high level volleyball, and that’s what you want, that’s how you get better.” Reeves understands the process more than most. It’s why she allows herself to stop and enjoy the peaks like in Manhattan. Where many, after achieving a career-high, seek the next high, Reeves is consciously aware to stop, as she did in Manhattan, and pause for a second to drink in the bliss.   “I just looked around and smiled, like ‘I’m here. This is the biggest stage probably anywhere’ and I had to just soak up the moment,” she said. “It was so awesome.” And she loves the lows, too, in that strange sort of way that mature athletes do, understanding that there are moments of growth within those lows. She looks at Chicago, where her and Cannon, coming off that career-high in Manhattan, lost both matches and finished 17th. “You gotta go through the trenches a little bit to see the good and it’s been such a fun journey to be a part of and that’s why longevity for me, you can go forever in beach volleyball,” Reeves said. “There’s just so much you can learn every single day you step foot in the sand.” At the moment, Reeves is learning as much as she can in the gym. She’s in there, three hours a day, Monday through Friday. She’s playing the long game now, prepping her body for a career that she wants to last as long as possible. John Hyden’s still doing it at 47, Jake Gibb at 43, Kerri Walsh Jennings at 41. She has as much self-doubt as anyone, Reeves. But when those moments of doubt arise, and the numbers in her bank account are looking as if they’ve been on an extreme diet, she journals, does a little introspection: Where’s my bliss? And then it all comes rushing back, all the love she has for this sport and everything and everyone in it. In an hour-long interview, Reeves used the word “love” no less than 30 times. So it really doesn’t matter what her bank account looks like, because no amount of money in the world can buy that kind of bliss, that self-assurance that, yes, she’s exactly where she needs to be, doing exactly what she needs to be doing, with the people she needs to be with. “I just love the sport of volleyball,” she said. “I think it brings me joy, it’s made me the person I am, I just love stepping out on the court and sharing the game with anyone and everyone.”

It was somewhere in the space between the Gstaad Major and the Espinho four-star when the façade came crashing down. How long had it been since Sarah Sponcil had decompressed? Relaxed? Reflected on all that had happened in her life in the past six blurs of months? In that span, she and Lily Justine, her partner at UCLA, established themselves as the best No. 2 NCAA beach pair in the country. In May, the Bruins repeated as NCAA champions. Days later, Sponcil was on a flight with Kelly Claes, her professional partner, to Itapema, Brazil, for an FIVB four-star where they’d play Kerri Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat in a country quota. They lost in 28 minutes. “It’s such a surreal fast-paced experience,  national championship to pro in three days, trying to adjust my game to match the opponents, the best in the world,” Sponcil said when she and Claes joined us on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I’m just speechless when I’m asked that question. You’re never ready. You never know what you’re really doing and if I didn’t (go for the Olympics), I’d regret it for the rest of my life.” On the outside, though, it very much appears as Sponcil is ready for all of this, as if she has keeping up with her rapidly-changing world, no problem. She and Claes rebounded from Itapema with four straight top-10 finishes, including a ninth at the FIVB World Championships. They didn't just look like they knew what they were doing. They made it look -- dare we say? -- easy. On top of all of that, in Warsaw the week before, while the rest of Sponcil’s teammates and classmates at UCLA were walking across the stage back home, Sponcil and Claes put on a comical photo shoot of Sponcil “graduating,” cap and gown included, diving for a ball on the sand. It can all look so glamorous sometimes -- the world traveling, the funny Instagrams, the hilarious videos of them running through airports and Sponcil walking around the world doing handstands -- that it’s easy to forget that she’s never done any of this before. “Sometimes I can’t even wrap my head around how stressful this year has been for her,” Claes said. “I think back to my first season coming out of college. We finished the USA Pairs Championship and jumped on a flight to Rio. We jumped on the world tour and it was so stressful and we had so many new things coming at me and I felt like my head was spinning and on top of that it’s an Olympic qualifying year for her.” And then, after dropping in the qualifier in Gstaad, now two months on the road with stops in Portugal, Tokyo, Vienna, and Moscow still looming, Sponcil let down her guard. “Sarah sent me a text to come outside and she’s balling,” Claes said. “And I’m like ‘OK, we’re doing this.’” They’re a fun-loving duo, Claes and Sponcil. They’re goofy and happy and wildly talented, two of the top players in the country despite being in diapers when Kerri Walsh Jennings, who they’re trying to beat out for the 2020 Olympics, was making her Olympic debut on the beach. But they are -- in spite of how magnificently tailored their lives may look at times -- human. Three months on the road is a monumental task for a human being, much less one who had never done any of this before. Full-time World Tour, Olympic race, figuring out flights and hotels and meals and how in the world to survive this thing. “Honestly, I felt like I had nothing together,” Sponcil said. “I was missing home, I felt like I was trying to change so many different things in my game, and you can’t change a whole lot and still feel like you’re playing free. Everything was just crazy in my mind, and definitely had some teary moments, and I was just honest with Kelly and open and vulnerable and I was like ‘I am not OK right now.’ “To get closer you have to be vulnerable in those positions and it sucks to acknowledge that you don’t have it all together, especially coming off of college where you had everything. You did so well and now you’re being pushed in ways you didn’t think you could be pushed because you won a month ago, on cloud nine, and now it’s ‘Oh, shiz.’ “But Kelly had been in the same position and her listening to me means everything. It was a step in the right direction to know if we win, we lose, whatever, we’re still in this together, and that’s really powerful. That was a huge moment for us.” Claes may be the perfect partner for Sponcil, old enough to have done this for three years now, young enough to still be able to fully empathize with where Sponcil is in life. Perhaps that explains why, once considered underdogs by many in this race, these two are eighth in the world in the Olympic ranks and third in the U.S. They trail only April Ross and Alix Klineman and Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat, with another 12 or so events -- depending on what they want to play -- left in the qualification period. Theirs is a chemistry wholly unique to them. Last October, Claes was still unsure with whom she was going to partner for this run. She and Walsh Jennings played a few events, and when Walsh Jennings turned to Sweat, Sponcil turned out to be an easy decision. “Chemistry is huge for me. So that’s why when Sarah and I initially started talking I was leaning towards her,” she said. “Once we started talking and hanging out and training together, I was like ‘Shoot, we line up on so many things.’ I get that a lot of people see a partnership as more of a business but I think it’s important to have that chemistry. There’s so much time off the court.” On flights, they write rap songs together, which they debuted, hilariously, terribly, on SANDCAST. How much fun they can have off the court allows them to play free and creative on it, allowing them to stretch their full skillsets without fear of making mistakes. “We had a flight from Czech to LA, and literally the entire flight we wrote songs,” Sponcil said. “The lady was like ‘Do you want something?’ and we were like ‘No! We’re working on something!’” Indeed they are. They’re working on an Olympic run. A full album of songs. How to get from one place to the next, be it in the air or on the ground. They’re figuring this thing out, Claes and Sponcil, and the first step to doing so is acknowledging that they have absolutely nothing figured out. “You’re trying to force yourself to figure it out, whether it’s transportation or strategy in a game. It’s so different than in college and I think when you accept that you’re never going to have it all figured out and just accept it -- moral of the story, we don’t have it figured out,” Sponcil said. “So don’t try to figure it out. Delayed flights, canceled flights -- just smile and wave. We’ll somehow find our way to the next destination, we just don’t know how yet.”

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

It’s a wonder how Caitlin Ledoux did it, given that she operates with the same 24 hours a day, the same seven days a week, as the rest of us. There she was, working full-time at Lululemon. There she was, coaching two or three club teams and a high school team. There she was, playing full-time professional beach volleyball, making three quarterfinals and her first career Sunday in Hermosa Beach, capping the year as the AVP’s Most Improved player. “I worked a lot,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Literally seven days a week coaching for four hours a day. That’s what I mean. I was overworked, I was exhausted, my body was struggling to keep up with what I was doing mentally, physically, everything. I just needed to hit that reset button.” On the court, 2017 had been her most successful year. Off it, it had been both mentally and physically debilitating, something that didn’t go unnoticed by her partner for the final three tournaments, Maria Clara Salgado. “She knew I was struggling here with my nutrition and my workouts and my working, I had been working a ton. It was too much. She said ‘Come down to Brazil, let’s see what works for you, because what you’ve been doing isn’t really working. Let’s put the reset button on and see if it works.’” And so, for three months of the “off-season,” Ledoux went to Brazil, getting reps six days a week from four different coaches. She switched her weight routine, swapping out Olympic lifting for more functional movements. She overhauled her nutrition. “It was the first time I’ve ever felt like a professional athlete,” said Ledoux, who has been playing professionally since she first qualified on the AVP in 2012. “That was career changing. It was amazing.” Indeed, it seems it has been career-changing. This year, Ledoux has arguably the best case to again take home the AVP’s Most Improved Player, making the quarterfinals in New York with Salgado before getting the call of a lifetime, from perhaps the most dominant female player in the game today: April Ross. "It was pretty funny because in New York she texted me and said 'Hey I need a practice partner for these days, can you practice with me?' And I had never played or practiced with her so I was stoked to practice with her for two days," Ledoux said. "And I was in the car with my mom and she texted me and I said 'Mom! Guess what just happened?' And she said 'April asked you to play.' And I said 'Yes!' It was awesome."  With Ross playing behind her block, Ledoux made her first final, which may be the match of the year on the AVP thus far, a 21-19, 19-21, 16-18 loss to Emily Day and Betsi Flint. Two weeks later she did it again with Geena Urango, making her third career Sunday and second straight losing once more to Day and Flint in the finals, 17-21, 21-16, 7-15. Another three weeks after that, in Hermosa, Ledoux was back on a Sunday, falling in three to Ross and Alix Klineman, 14-21, 21-18, 9-15. “A lot of it is just personal growth about myself and having the right support system around myself the last year and a half,” Ledoux said of her blink-and-you-missed-it rise. “Having that support system and the coaches and helping you figure out what you need to do, I’d say that honestly is the biggest thing.” What you need to do. It’s a simple concept for Ledoux. Identify what your goal is. Figure out the next step. Just do. Olympics, she knew, has been her goal since she was a little girl. How would one get into the Olympics? Travel. A lot. With no promises of a return anytime soon. So there her and Irene Pollock went, jet-setting across the world, beginning in Russia of 2014. Over the next three years, they went to 16 FIVBs in 10 different countries, qualifying in some, whiffing on others, taking every risk they could, because there were goals to reach and one ladder to get there. Just go. “It was hard, but the same time it wasn’t,” Ledoux said. “Irene and I had the same goal and that’s to make the Olympics and we knew that was what we needed to do. We needed to just drown ourselves in all the experience of traveling and losing and having to play these single elimination matches to get that experience. I look back on that year and it was a very draining year but I also learned a lot. “When you look at the end game: what’s your goal? I had to do it. It’s a no-brainer.” And sure, it may have been rough for a while. There may have been a learning curve on how to travel internationally, particularly when doing so in, say South Africa. The investment is beginning to see returns, dividends in the form of a bronze medal (in China with Sarah Sponcil), a silver (in Australia with Jace Pardon) and a gold (in Thailand with Emily Stockman). “I think there’s probably a more responsible way to do it than the way I did it,” Ledoux said of climbing the ranks of the FIVB. “But I’ve really enjoyed my life the last five years of just doing it and saying yes to a bunch of experiences. One of the cool things about this career is I look back on the last five years and all of the crazy memories I have of going to all of these places and a lot of times I had fun because we lost out super early and we didn’t know how to book flights yet so we’d book our flight home a week or week and a half in these places and we lost on the first day and now we have a week in South Africa and it’s ‘What do we do?’ “I look back on these last five years and I wouldn’t change anything. If you’re looking to just start, I would say set your goal and jump in.”

In December of 2017, the AVP made a landmark announcement: It would be partnering with Amazon Prime for the upcoming season, and several seasons after that. The partnership would include a much-improved livestream experience, with viewers able to watch on one of the most rapidly growing platforms, with a professional announcing team and a camera crew and interviews and features and everything one might expect when an athletic league teams up with one of the country’s most popular businesses. It was a widely lauded move, and it has since been met with enthusiasm and approval -- and the occasional critique, an inevitable side effect of launching a new platform -- from the beach fans that be. Yet here’s what hasn’t been announced in any official capacity, since the individual in question does not operate under any official capacity anyway: the launching of Brian Cook’s wildly popular Instagram stories, in which he follows and posts about the AVP from his apartment in Manhattan Beach, creating a character that is at once overtly sarcastic and deeply knowledgeable, hilarious yet also sort of correct in his analysis, and the best brand ambassador Michelob Ultra never knew it wanted. “The whole thing started with the first tournament in Austin,” said Cook, who isn’t playing because of a series of surgeries required after years of playing indoor in college at Stanford and overseas in Italy and Greece. “I was just watching the livestream, and that one was kind of a negative story, it wasn’t the nicest story, but I had no bad intentions and still don’t have any bad intentions for anyone. But I gained a little following because a lot of people were frustrated with the Amazon Prime stream. It was their first time, it was understandable, and I just wanted to let them know – look, you gotta make it a little better.” And, uh, you know, he had just undergone hip surgery, so “I was also on a lot of Percocet and was a lot more vocal.” Indeed, the sarcasm, and brutal honesty, is strong with this one.   It has become something of a phenomenon, though. At most AVP events, a good number of the players closely follow Cook’s stories, some of which contain legitimate, if not barbed, feedback… and some of which just contain hysterical, mostly nonsensical posts about Michelob Ultra. He’s here to make you laugh. And he’s very good at it – so long as you don’t take him too seriously. And besides, he doesn’t mean most of what he says. Like all jokes, only a kernel of it is true, the rest is exaggeration, entertainment for the masses. “Let’s give [Amazon Prime] some credit: What they’re doing is hard,” said Cook, whose sister, Karissa, made the semifinals with Katie Spieler in Austin. “They’re going eight-hour days on stream? That’s insane. That’s really hard. But when you’re watching every single second of the coverage, you’re going to catch some bloopers, and I’ve documented them.” And it’s not only Amazon that is on the receiving end of Cook’s jokes. He pokes fun at April Ross and Alix Klineman, who hug between each point, whether it’s an error or an ace. “I’m all about Team Hugs,” he said. “They’re great sports about me counting how many times they hug. In two matches I think they eclipsed 300. It’s exciting if you’re not at the event. You can definitely catch the livestream and count the hugs yourself.” Sometimes the jokes go well. Sometimes, as it goes in comedy, they don’t. Cook couldn’t resist the opportunity to lean into Reid Priddy’s struggles at the score freeze, posting a picture of a frozen man stuck in a freeze. “Little did I know he’d get a little mad,” Cook said, “and block me on Instagram.” He said this after acknowledging that Priddy has long been one of Cook’s idols, someone he looked up to throughout his prolific indoor career. “He’s one of the best players of all time,” Cook said. Sometimes sarcasm gets you laughs. Sometimes it gets you blocked on Instagram. In any event: Cook has picked up quite the following from his satirical stories, a fun way to bide his time while he recovers from surgery before he can get back out on the beach himself. In the meantime, "There is,” he said, “an absolute revolution going on.”   

It may seem difficult to imagine at first, what with a Pac-12 title, an NCAA Championship and an AVP final under her belt in the span of just a few weeks, but yes, Sarah Sponcil does struggle from time to time. Take Spanish, for example. “I have not taken it since I was in fifth grade,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “A lot of people take Spanish in high school, so it was elementary Spanish and I was like ‘Ok, we’re chillin’ with the colors and the weather and all that stuff and the lady is like ‘Ok so the next class we’re going to be speaking in full Spanish. And I was like ‘Wait, what? What did I sign up for? Is there a level below this?’ So that’s been kind of a struggle.” But on the court? It may take some digging to find a soft spot in Sponcil’s game. Partnered with Lauren Fendrick for Austin, Sponcil won her first four career AVP main draw matches in straight sets, setting up a final against April Ross and Alix Klineman. “I think I just had that mentality – people are going to be stronger, faster,” Sponcil said. “I think I just tried to put the pressure on, trying to stay aggressive. I think a lot of people go to shots if they get blocked, they kind of just do that. I felt like I was full force. I just want to swing, if I get blocked, I’ll just work around.” She worked around Angela Bensend and Olaya Pazo, Caitlin Ledoux and Kendra VanZwieten, Janelle Allen and Kerri Schuh, Karissa Cook and Katie Spieler. It was one thing to play alongside an Olympian and Stanford’s assistant coach. It was an entirely different feeling to play against Ross, the player Sponcil has looked up to since she began playing volleyball. “I mean, you’re playing against April Ross,” Sponcil said. “I literally had pictures of her when I was like, 14 and 17. Just to be playing against her and seeing me stack up against her was really cool. It was a really great experience.” She watched the film a few times, enough to know that she stacked up just fine. Ross and Klineman had only dropped a single set prior to the finals, yet there was Sponcil, pushing the two-time Olympic medalist to a 24-22 first set, and again to a 25-23 second set. “We basically played a third game,” Sponcil said, laughing. “I felt like I was taking it point by point. I don’t know. I thought it was an amazing challenge. You look up to someone for so long and you don’t want to miss this opportunity. You want to show them like ‘Ok, I deserve to be here. It wasn’t a fluke that we were here.’ “Right after we lost, as long as we gave them a run for their money, that was ok with me. Just to be that close and within striking distance gives me hope and just makes you want to play that much more and get that much better so you have the opportunity to face off with them again.” She will. There is no doubting that. She had to skip New York for her finals, though she plans on playing Seattle and the remainder of the AVP season, and she’s entertaining the possibility of sprinkling in some FIVB stops as well. At the end of the day, it is this: Sarah Sponcil just wants to keep winning. “I’m just trying to get to know the beach volleyball world,” she said. “Now it’s like ‘Ok this is a completely different world. Book your own flights, book your own practices with different people.’ “I’m just going to keep trying, keep getting into AVPs, and I’ll see what happens from there.”

The 2018 beach volleyball season is, remarkably, upon us. In a way, at least.  The FIVB kicked off the 2018 year in the very first week of the year, hosting an indoor beach tournament at The Hague, a four-star event to open the season, hauling in a variety of new partnerships and unfamiliar faces. One of those new partnerships, of course, was that of April Ross and Alix Klineman, who took the longest road possible, battling through a pair of country quota matches, two more in the qualifier, and then running off six straight-set wins in the main draw to claim gold, beating Brazil's Maria Antonelli and Carolina Salgado – another team that came out of the qualifier – in the finals. “I'm going to be riding high on this win for awhile and this week in The Hague was a blast,” Ross wrote on Instagram afterwards. “Pretty excited or this journey.” It was Klineman's first international beach tournament, though far from her first time on a big stage, having played on both the Brazil and Italian indoor leagues. As for the rest of the U.S. teams, though, it wasn't quite the start to the year many would have desired. Sara Hughes and Kelly Claes finished ninth, while Brooke Sweat and Summer Ross took a 17th and Lauren Fendrick and Karissa Cook finished 25th. The men didn't fare much better, with the new partnership of Billy Allen and Ryan Doherty claiming the highest finish of American teams at ninth. Casey Patterson and Stafford Slick and Miles Evans and Billy Kolinske both finished 17th. "It was definitely a little weird overall," said Trevor Crabb, who failed to make it out of the qualifier, on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. "Me and [Sean Rosenthal] pretty much decided we won't practice together before we left for the trip because I went back to Hawaii for the offseason and pre-season for six weeks, doing some training there, and I'm not exactly sure how much training he was doing. It was so early in the year, it's the end of off-season and beginning of pre-season, and it affected us for sure." 

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.”

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.”