Podcasts about Jake Gibb

Chaim Schalk is a Canadian-American Professional beach volleyball player. Starting at age 12, he has enjoyed success at the elite level winning championship titles in College, in the AVP, FIVB, NORCECA - and even a ninth place finish in the 2016 Rio Olympics. James Shaw is an American professional beach volleyball player. And standout indoor setter at Stanford (Winning the Lloy Ball Award) and an dynamic opposite on the professional indoor scene, he wasted no time getting his feet hot in the sand, highlighting his amazing run from the qualifier at Huntington Beach to the main draw to an impressive 7th place, and then a third at Virginia Beach, and top finishes on the international scene (1st at FIVB New Zealand). 01:04 - How did this marriage happen? Plus, having a partner where you don't have to deal with your partner, motivation vs tactical, why Jake Gibb was so good. 12:44 - why they have shown improvement the last 4 months, being good at everything vs being great at one thing 29:50 - getting that "level up" monkey off your back, crossing your goals with your expectations 38:45 - Where there can be improvement in their game, plus, some of the challenges going from indoor to beach as well as things that transferred more seamlessly 42:50 - the list of "controllables," plus, more areas for improvement 57:35 - getting after it vs feeling out/strategic 1:08-12 - Thoughts on the league 1:20:56 - Lightning Rounds

In this episode of the Better at Beach podcast, Brandon Joyner and I discuss the AVP Huntington tournament and share our observations and insights. We praise the AVP for its coverage and accessibility on YouTube, allowing viewers to easily watch matches from all courts! We also discuss strategies and tactics used by players, including the importance of simplifying the game when playing with new partners, all by highlighting the impressive performance of Sean Rosenthal and Cody Caldwell, as well as the dominance of Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb. We also discuss the impact of wind conditions on gameplay and offer tips for adjusting to challenging conditions. The conversation covers various topics related to volleyball techniques, drills, and upcoming camps. Additionally, we share a drill to simulate playing in windy conditions and discuss the concept of zones in setting. The conversation then shifts to analyzing the performance of players in the AVP tournament, including Jake Urrutia, DJ and Brian Miller, and James Shaw. Moreover, we highlight the importance of being aggressive in hitting and the tough competition in the AVP event. The conversation concludes with a discussion on upcoming camps and programs offered by Better at Beach (don't forget to check the links below!) Time stamps 00:00 Teaser Introduction and Overview of AVP Huntington Tournament 04:44 Praise for AVP's Coverage on YouTube 08:42 Impressive Performance by Sean Cook and Cody Caldwell 13:53 Playing with New Partners: Simplify and Trust 24:24 Mastering Spin Control and Wind Conditions 25:15 Drills and Strategies for Coaches and Players 27:23 Understanding Space and Movement on the Court 29:40 Improving Arm Swing Mechanics with the Fix Your Arm Swing in 21 Days Program 38:53 Player Spotlight: James Shaw's Powerful Hitting 43:18 Strong Competition at the AVP Tournament in Huntington Beach 49:20 Upcoming Beach Volleyball Camps and Tournaments COMPLETE WORKOUT PLAN FOR ONLY $37 https://www.betteratbeach.com/offers/... FIX YOUR ARM SWING IN 21 DAYS ONLY $37 https://www.betteratbeach.com/offers/...

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!    

Andy Benesh is the most improved beach volleyball player in the world in 2023. Entering this season with Miles Partain, Benesh was seeded third in the qualifier of a Challenge. Now? He and Partain are the No. 1 ranked team in the United States, and No. 3 in the world. His climb has been extraordinary, and exactly what USA Volleyball needed after the retirements of Jake Gibb and Phil Dalhausser. On this episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, we talk all about Benesh's breakout season, including: What has led to his blink-and-you-missed-it improvement in 2023 How he and Miles Partain have had at least “75 hours of debate” on their offensive and defensive strategies and vision His breakout win at the Gstaad Elite16 – where he and Partain beat Anders Mol and Christian Sorum twice in the same tournament The process of adding the jump-set to his game, and why being comfortable with failure has led to so much success And much, much more. Always a fun one with big Andy Benesh on the show. ENJOY! *** 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 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!  

What should you be thinking during every match? In this episode, Coaches Mark Burik, Brandon Joyner together with the AVP Pro Casey Patterson will help us to be a better partner and find ways on dealing with the pressure of the game.

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter features Mark Bucknam, the producer of the upcoming and highly anticipated beach volleyball docuseries, AVP Uncovered. It debuts on Thursday night on the AVP Uncovered YouTube Channel, so be sure to check it out! On this episode, we chatted about: How AVP Uncovered wound up following Kristen Nuss, Taryn Kloth, Jake Gibb, and Zana Muno How Bucknam convinced his two business partners to follow the AVP around for a month with no promise of a return on their investment How the AVP Uncovered idea was born – and the many changes it underwent prior to the finished product The fascinating lives of beach volleyball players off the court And a whole lot more. ENJOY! *** NEW BOOK ALERT!!! Travis Mewhirter and Kent Steffes just published a seminal work on the history of beach volleyball in their new book, Kings of Summer: The Rise of Beach Volleyball. Check it out on Amazon!! https://www.amazon.com/Kings-Summer-rise-beach-volleyball/dp/B0B3JHFKM7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WGJFWHPBGPQ2&keywords=kings+of+summer+book&qid=1658922972&sprefix=kings+of+summer+book%2Caps%2C1328&sr=8-1 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

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is a re-run episode that we recorded back in August of 2018 with Jake Gibb. When we initially recorded this episode, Gibb was one day removed from the Manhattan Beach Open finals, where he and Taylor Crabb lost to Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena.  We figured now would be a great time to run it back, given that Gibb is in his final tournament of his storied career, competing at the World Tour Finals.  On this episode, Gibb discusses: - How ignorance perhaps paved the way to him becoming one of the best American blockers of all-time - The growth of his partnership with Taylor Crabb. This in particular is fun to look back upon, as Crabb was just beginning to come into his own in 2018 and is now one of the best defenders in the world.  - His growth curve as a professional beach volleyball player, and the importance of a growth mindset - Two young Norwegian kids named Anders Mol and Christian Sorum And, as always, much, 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!  

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, finally brings the hosts back together, in person, for the first time in a few months. Here they discuss Tri Bourne's recent wild ride into the Olympics, and how he thrived during them, finishing with the highest hitting percentage of the entire Olympic Games.  On this episode, we discuss: - When Bourne got the call, sitting in a Dairy Queen with his daughter, from Jake Gibb, asking him to come to Tokyo - The weird vibe at the Olympics, with all the strange occurrences that had happened, from Taylor Crabb testing positive to Phil Dalhausser and Jake Gibb being forced to quarantine - Tri's energy, and how he was able to perk the team up more than a bit - What's next for Bourne, and how everything has changed, yet nothing has changed at all *** 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!

Annemiek Van Vleuten comes back from broken back to win gold + Katie Ledecky bounces back in 1500M free! Australia dominating in the water and Jake Gibb still dominating at 45. USA 3v3 women's basketball wins gold! US Tennis medal contention in jeopardy + Japans reign in gymnastics continues. US Women's water polo loses first time in 13 years! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is a phenomenal one, a wide-ranging conversation with Sean Rosenthal, a two-time Olympian and one of the best to ever play the game. While Rosenthal will not be featured in the Tokyo Olympic Games, his influence on the game is the same as it's ever been.  On this episode, we chat about: - What it's been like for Rosenthal to not go for the Olympic Games this quad, the first time since 2008 he has been out of the running - His deep relationship with Jake Gibb - His mindset throughout the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, and why he never could wish ill-will on his fellow countrymen vying for his spot - Why he's been able to remain so popular with the fans after all these years - His thoughts on the AVP's three-event season And 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 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!  

USA Olympian Jake Gibb joins The Drive to discuss his path to Tokyo, a late start in beach volleyball, his fourth Olympic games, old Bountiful days + more

On today's show...- NBA Playoffs- Jazz offseason - Front office shakeups- RSL/Euros- Olympics- Tony Jones - Zach Harper- Jake Gibb- Trey Fitz-Gerald- Nedum Onuoha + more 

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter is a special one, for it is the first episode featuring a player competing in the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. Taylor Crabb has long been the presumed face of this next generation of American beach volleyball players. Now that generation is here, as he and Jake Gibb qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, alongside lovable veterans Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena. On this episode, we discuss: - What it is like for Taylor Crabb being an Olympian, something he's long dreamed of - The moment in Ostrava when he and Jake Gibb and coach Rich Lambourne knew they had qualified for Tokyo - The strangeness of this 2021 season, with so much uncertainty post-COVID - Why players should prioritize competing on the AVP just as much as they do the FIVB - The blessings of being raised in Hawai'i, growing up at the Outrigger Canoe Club And much, much more. Such a fun episode. 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 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!

Commander Jack talks to 4x U.S. Men's Sand Volleyball Olympian Jake Gibb about the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo and the trials and tribulations of training during COVID-19.

Hear from Candy and her son, Jake Gibbs, as they discuss what's on the horizon with Hope Choice. Including the new Hope Choice location at WTAMU and 2021 RISE Summer Camps. 

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features the hosts, Bourne and Mewhirter, answering a bag full of fan questions. We begin by recapping Bourne's wild ride in Cancun, where he lived for 23 days, competing in three Olympic qualification tournaments. Then we dive in to the questions, discussing: - What have Qatar's Cherif Samba and Ahmed Tijan been doing to make four finals in five events this year?  - What are our top-five matches from Cancun?  - Breaking down Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb's insane match with Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb - What's it like to win Fuds, playing on a sponsored team?    *** - 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!

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 today's show we go CROSSNET with AVP champion & MVP, FIVB Champion, 2021 Tokyo Olympic hopeful - Taylor Crabb.  Taylor and I talk about his unique childhood and the many sports he grew up playing but his overall love for the game of volleyball. We also discuss the incredible feat of someone, someday winning an Olympic Gold Medal in both indoors and on the beach in the same Olympics - a throw back to one of our first interviews with Karch who threw that gauntlet out there. Taylor shares his indoor to beach journey. What he is working on with his game right now. Playing with his brother Trevor early on, and how fired up he is about getting to Tokyo and competing with his long time partner Jake Gibb. We also take some time and dig in to the last FIVB tournament in Doha where he and Jake won the Bronze medal. So cool to have Taylor on the show.   Make sure to subscribe, give us 5 stars, and leave your comments.  Go to crossnetgame.com today to order your own CROSSNET. Make sure to use our promo code - GOLD at checkout for $20 off your purchase and be on the look out for this week's CROSSNET giveaway!  Feel free to email Ryan with questions and comments: ryan@crossnetgame.com Who knows, we might get your questions answered on the show!  Follow Ryan on Instagram - @ryanmillar9 Follow Taylor too! - @tcrabbs

3-time Olympian and AVP beach volleyball legend Jake Gibb joins us for a great conversation of hope, determination and evolution. How has a 44 year old professional athlete continued to perform at the highest level and what can you take from his story to apply to your personal evolution? Listen as Jake discusses his growth as a professional athlete, father and 2-time cancer survivor.  Join us after the podcast by following Jake and cheering him on as he vies for his 4th Olympic Games!

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Ed Keller, one of the most passionate human beings in the world when it comes to the sport of beach volleyball. He's a walking BVBinfo, the guy who can tell Phil Dalhausser more about Phil Dalhausser's career than Phil Dalhausser. He's a staple at 16th street, the new central training center for the top AVP professionals, and a longtime friend of Sean Rosenthal, among many of the other big-time AVP leaders -- Casey Patterson, Chase Budinger, Jake Gibb. He arguably knows more about the game, and its history, than anyone we've had on the show, and this podcast was absolute gold. We chat about everything from the 1996 Olympic Games to stories of Sean Rosenthal's youth, to the current Olympic race and Ed Keller's statistical breakdown of what every team needs to do to get in. If you're a fan of beach volleyball, you will LOVE this podcast. We certainly did. SHOOTS!

Professional Beach Volleyball Athlete, Casey Patterson comes on the show to hang out and chat about his career and lessons that he has learned over the years. Cassey is a veteran athlete that has competed on multiple stages within the AVP and FIVB and has compiled multiple awards. He is a very well rounded individual, as you will see in the episode, he has done way more than just play in the Olympics. Olympic Experience2016 Olympic Games (tied for 19th with Jake Gibb)World Championship Experience 2017 World Championships (tied for 17th with Theo Brunner)2015 World Championships (tied for 5th with Jake Gibb)2013 World Championships (4th place with Jake Gibb)Other Notable’sFinished fifth at the 2015 Beach World Championships with Jake Gibb. Duo was eliminated in the quarterfinals by BrazilWith Gibb, named USA Volleyball’s Beach Team of the Year for 2013 and AVP’s 2014 men’s Team of Year In this episode Casey discusses: - The difference b/w beach volleyball and other team sports- Making a living as a Professional Beach Volleyball Athlete- Brand Creation and Self Promotion- Olympic Experience – Rio 2016- Coaching & Connecting with your athletes I hope you enjoy this episode! Casey is extremely knowledgeable and awesome to listen to, if you have any questions for either of us, feel reach to reach out to us with the contact information below. If you happened to enjoy this episode we really appreciate ratings, reviews, and shares. Reach out to Casey PattersonVia Instagram: @caseypatt Reach out to Connor DerricksonVia email: connorderrickson@twinsbaseball.comVia Instagram: @connorderrickson

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter features Nick Lucena, one of the top defenders on the AVP and FIVB tours of his generation. In this episode, we discuss: What this year has looked like for Lucena, which began in Doha and ended in a wild trip to Australia Playing a fun, no-block tournament with Taylor Crabb Why he and Phil Dalhausser decided to split-block in the AVP Chicago tournament in 2018 What motivates Lucena, who is 41 years old, to continue playing The competitive streak that has kept him at the top of his game since his early 20s The four-week expedited training schedule he and Dalhausser undertook to prepare for the AVP Champions Cup How crazy the U.S. will look without Dalhausser and Jake Gibb in the game after this season This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson volleyball. They make the best balls in the game, and you can get 20 percent off by using our discount code, Sandcast-20.  Be sure to check out our new book, Volleyball for Milkshakes, on Amazon and, if you're feeling extra magnanimous, drop us a review! It goes a long way.  Thanks as always for listening! SHOOTS!

Are you a volleyball fanatic? Join Olympic Gold Medalist, Ryan Millar, as he chats all things volleyball with some of the biggest names in the sport. The CROSSNET Volleyball Podcast's mission is to cover both indoor, outdoor, and the business of volleyball. Sponsored by the world’s first four-way volleyball game - CROSSNET.On today's show we go CROSSNET with 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist and current coach of one of the best beach volleyball duos (Jake Gibb & Taylor Crabb) in the world - Rich Lambourne. Rich and I dig into his roots in the game of volleyball. His illustrious Olympic journey to now shifting his focus to the joy of coaching on the beach and why Jake and Taylor are the dream partnership to work with.Enjoy this fun interview with my long time friend, Rich Lambourne. Make sure to subscribe, give us 5 stars, and leave your comments. Feel free to email Ryan with questions and comments: ryan@crossnetgame.comWho knows, we might even get your question answered on the show! 

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Casey Patterson, one of the biggest personalities and talents on the AVP Tour since Donald Sun brought it out of bankruptcy in 2012.  In the past nine seasons, Patterson has won 14 AVPs, qualified for the Rio Olympics with Jake Gibb, and was named the AVP Team of the Year three times. He has since partnered with Stafford Slick, Theo Brunner, Chase Budinger and, once again, Theo Brunner.  On this episode of SANDCAST, we discuss - Patterson's insane nine-day stretch in 2009 in which he won the Swedish Tour, flew back to California for the birth of his first child, flew to New York to win his first AVP with Ty Loomis.  - His journey into volleyball, including riding the bench at BYU, and living on a floor in Hawai'i with $42 and a skateboard to his name.  - The early grind of being a professional beach volleyball player, living, as he calls it, a "gypsy life," finding anyone who would play with him and doing it, no matter where in the world it would take him.  - How the Covid-19 shortened season is different from the multiple bankruptcies Patterson has experienced in the sport.  - His 2012-2016 run with Jake Gibb, and how his big personality was not only ok with Gibb, but encouraged - The development of Casey's "hype-man" personality, otherwise known to Patterson as going "full-Hulk mode."  - His breakup with Chase Budinger, and how he handled it with more class and respect than he would have previously, because he's simply in a different phase of competing.  - His thoughts on the AVP Champions Cup, and all of the crazy partner switches currently happening.  This episode, as always, is brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. Use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to get 20 percent off on the best equipment in beach volleyball.  Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel! In case you haven't heard, Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter wrote a book! It's called Volleyball for Milkshakes, and we'd love it if you picked up a copy and let us know how it is! You can buy on Amazon.com!

Today on the Max Out Mindset podcast is Jake Gibb a professional beach volleyball player. My partner Commander Jack Riggins at Performance Mountian and I did a joint podcast with Jake. Jake has been to 3 Olympics and is the oldest professional player on the tour. We talked about the mental side of his game in different capacities, the drive to compete against competitors half his age, and his final professional goal to medal in the 2021 Summer Olympics.   Follow Jake on Twitter, Instagram   Check out the library of podcasts here

On this week's episode, Candy interviews the RISE Camp pastors, Mark Boyett and Asher Day and Camp Directory, Jake Gibbs. Listen to learn the the heart, vision and what to expect at the upcoming camps!

 The idea began, like all viral ideas do, with something so blatantly obvious it had been overlooked by everyone. Parker Conley was the rare type of teenaged boy in Arizona who was obsessed with beach volleyball. It isn’t entirely unheard of. A handful of professionals hail from Arizona, and the sport has a small presence. But it is rare, to be sure. Conley sought any resource he could to learn the sport. Namely, YouTube. He’d watch anything he could find, no matter the era – old school Sinjin and Karch, all things Taylor Crabb, American or international, male or female. He’d see highlight after highlight, realizing, to his own subtle surprise, that there was no Instagram account that shared them. Other sports – basketball, primarily – have thousands of social media accounts dedicated almost exclusively to highlights, sharing clips that go viral, the type you’d see on SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays. Beach volleyball had none of that. “I thought,” Conley said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “I should do it.” Thus, BounceBeach was born. Maybe. He waffled between names for a bit, seeking something about beach volleyball and some kind of impressive play within the sport. Bouncing a ball is one of the more highlight-worthy plays – just ask Sean Rosenthal, who is still, 13 years later, asked about his “Vegas Line” – and the alliteration worked. Conley created the Instagram account, pouring over film from The Hague four-star in 2019 as his first event, and began creating highlights. “I posted six or seven videos, the quality was horrible, I had a huge watermark, you could hardly see the players,” Conley said, laughing at the memory of his first attempt. “I was like ‘I’m not letting those stay on my page.’” Nevertheless, the social media world took notice. When a sport is starved for content, particularly highlights that players can use to market their own brand, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the highest of quality. As Conley perfected his craft, the momentum only increased, a snowball careening down the mountain.    Soon, the pros themselves, the same ones on which Conley had watched so many hours of film, began reaching out: Phil Dalhausser, Jake Gibb, Nick Lucena, Casey Patterson. Could Conley send over a few highlights they could use? After sitting down for half an hour, processing the fact that it was, indeed, that Phil Dalhausser who had messaged him, Conley would reply: Of course he’d send over a highlight. “I had no idea where it was going to go,” said Conley, who is 17 and enrolled in online classes both at a high school and Arizona State. “I’m still blown away by how many people are following it. I thought I would eventually hit the cap and I’d stop getting followers but I haven’t hit it.” If anything, BounceBeach is only picking up speed, taking on a life of its own. It’s morphed into something of an online forum, a place to discuss the highlights, where the best players in the world can beat their chest or poke fun of others. It’s its own subculture, in a way. When Conley posted a video of John Hyden digging a ruthless swing from Taylor Crabb, putting the ensuing transition point away with a jumbo poke that tagged the back line, Crabb commented, in jest, “Who won?” This ignited a string of amusing comments and debates, becoming its own chat room. “As I started growing, it’s been cool to see how the pros interact with it,” Conley said. “That was my goal, originally: to have my name known, build a brand for myself in a way. Having it be a forum in a way where pros will talk about highlights has been kind of surreal.” In less than a year and a half, Conley has amassed nearly 40,000 followers. More than that, he’s created something that virtually every beach volleyball player and fan turns to when seeking highlights. He tapped the latent gold mine of content, becoming essentially the exclusive source of viral clips. The FIVB took note, asking Conley to edit some highlights for them as well, joining the growing list of players. It’s become almost a competition among players to get their highlights featured on BounceBeach, which has become beach volleyball’s version of SportsCenter. “It’s been crazy, surreal to see people say ‘I got on BounceBeach!’ I never expected that,” Conley said. “It’s insane. It almost has become something on its own, where people consider it a brand. When I started, I was just posting highlights for the fun of it.” He’s still having fun with it. Still digging through YouTube, discovering gems with barely any views. “I’m like ‘How has nobody ever seen this?’” Conley said. With him, and BounceBeach, now everybody can.  

This week the USA Men's National Team OH, Taylor Sander drops in on The Viral Volley Podcast (since we didn't get to meet for a surf today) to discuss "life" in the last year after FIVB VNL 2019, shoulder rehabilitation, the COVID postponement of FIVB VNL and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  We also reminisce on the Norco HS and BYU days, battles with Taylor Crabb and how he and brother Brenden are taking on TCrabb and Jake Gibb at the HB Pier! 

Rich Lambourne won an olympic gold medal in Beijing as a member of the 2008 USA Mens indoor volleyball national team. He now lives hear in Costa Mesa and is coach to the top mens beach volleyball duo in the US, Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb. Blake met Rich at CrossFIt Chalk on 18th St. in Costa Mesa, and now he's our very special guest for episode 18! We dive deep into some real sh*t in this one. Like real deep. Let us know what you think on Instagram @cgre_tv or subscribe and leave a review on the Apple Podcasts App! If you want to connect with Rich, you can find him on IG @richyusa (he's verified

Typically, I’d be a bit neurotic by now. Short on sleep. Distracted. Mind ping-ponging back and forth, looking at the draw, then looking again – did it change did it change? This, of course, is not the typical pre-AVP Huntington Beach qualifier eve. This is just a Wednesday like any other in the off-season: no events on the foreseeable horizon. Nothing specific to train for. Sleep comes easy. In such a strangely uncertain sports world, Tri and I opened up SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, to fan questions, and we did our best to answer, or at least opine, on them. A few I’ve written our responses to. Because nobody wants to read 3,000 words of me answering questions, you can find our answers to the rest on our episode.   Question one: Who are some younger players to watch out for (not obvious ones like Eric Beranek, etc.) Where do you think the season will begin? Where have you been training? (and we know you have, wink) This is always such a difficult list for the men, because there really aren’t many youngsters who would willingly commit to beach over indoor. Kawika Shoji discussed that very thing last week on SANDCAST, and the list of reasons is nearly endless, with financial security being the most obvious. However, there are a handful. Miles Partain is the obvious candidate here. At just 18 years old and still in high school, he already has a fifth-place AVP finish to his name, at AVP Chicago with Paul Lotman. He made the final three AVP main draws of the season – Manhattan, Chicago, Hawai’i – and trained the entire off-season under coach Tyler Hildebrand and our top national teams. He’s a can’t-miss up-and-comer. The women, meanwhile, are nearly endless. Peruse the top two courts at any of the top 15 or so college programs and you have AVP main draw talents. The names I’ll point you to, however, are these: Savvy Simo and Abby Van Winkle (UCLA), Alaina Chacon and Molly McBain (Florida State), Haley Harward (USC), Brook Bauer and Deahna Kraft (Pepperdine), Julia Scoles and Morgan Martin (Hawai’i), Delaynie Maple and Megan Kraft (committed to USC), Torrey Van Winden (Cal Poly), Reka Orsi Toth and Iya Lindahl (LMU), Sunniva Helland-Hansen and Carly Perales (Stetson), Dani Alvarez (TCU), Kristen Nuss and Claire Coppola (LSU), Mima Mirkovic (Cal). Of the bunch, my breakout selection would be Simo, UCLA’s dynamic court one defender and unquestioned leader of the team I would have bet a fair amount of American dollars to win the National Championship. She has all the potential to become this year’s version of a Sarah Sponcil, who made the finals in her first AVP event, or Zana Muno, another Bruin who made an AVP semifinal in her rookie season.   Question two: Should the AVP start a Dino Division for players post 50 who still want to compete 3-4 times per year? Golf has masters, AVP has dino?  I thought this question was hysterical in the best of ways. Idealistically, this sounds great. Who wouldn’t want to watch Tim Hovland yap with Sinjin Smith, while the always-quiet Mike Dodd digs balls and Randy Stoklos yells about how he was the first person to ever hand set? I’m game. But it is, let’s all be honest here, a bit quixotic. The AVP does well enough to put on eight events for the best, most explosive players in the world, and when compared to the major sports, there’s a niche market at best. Would there really be a market for old men with big mouths and small verticals? The dino is such a great event because it’s the only one – and it’s given a shot of life with younger players such as Tayor Crabb to help carry their older counterparts. It’s fun, competitive, and a little heartwarming. Golf’s Champions Tour works because guys like Tom Watson and Fred Couples can still compete at close to the same level they could when they were in their primes. There’s no impact on their bodies, and the level of play is still astonishingly high. Watson, for example, finished second at The Open Championship in 2009, losing in a four-hole playoff, 26 years after his most recent major win, when he was 60 years old. I have no doubt that Sinjin can still ball. But could he get out there with Stoklos and take Jake Gibb and Crabb to three sets in the finals of the Manhattan Beach Open? Doubtful. I think p1440 nailed an older-aged event when they hosted a four-on-four match featuring two legends and two current pros on either team. There’s certainly a market and space for something whimsical like that to happen a few times per year. Until then, keep the Dino the great, annual event that it is.   Question 3: Will there be a new BVB book (got my copy signed by Tri in Hamburg)? Yes. Maybe. I can’t tell you for sure. But all I can say is that there could, potentially, be a possibility of an upcoming beach volleyball book to be released in early summer.   Question 4: Rate your top 5 male defenders/blockers internationally. This was such a fun one to discuss. Everybody keeps talking about how much parity there is on the world tour, and with good reason. Attempting to nail down the top five defenders is, to me, like trying to rank my favorite golf courses in Myrtle Beach – they’re all the best courses. The top five blockers came a little easier. We decided on: Anders Mol, Norway Oleg Stoyanovskiy, Russia Phil Dalhausser, United States Alison Cerutti, Brazil Evandro Goncalves, Brazil Honorable mentions included: Paolo Nicolai, Italy; Michal Bryl, Poland; Jake Gibb, United States; Tri Bourne, United States; Julius Thole, Germany. The defenders weren’t so clear-cut. It’s impossible to rank them because they’re all playing behind blockers of varying sizes and abilities. But we wound up pinning it down to: Taylor Crabb, United States (we are prepared to duke it out from six feet away with those who disagree) Christian Sorum, Norway Clemens Wickler, Germany Viacheslav Krasilnikov, Russia Grzegorz Fijalek, Poland Honorable mentions included: Alvaro Filho, Brazil; Bruno Schmidt, Brazil; Adrian Carambula, Italy; Nick Lucena, United States; Daniele Lupo, Italy.

Alex Brouwer sought the source of the voice. The one that perpetually stood out from among 13,000 screaming Germans at the World Championships in Hamburg. The one that was always heard by any player competing against an American team. When he found the bearded face of Christian Hartford, the Dutchman pumped a fist and said “Let’s go U.S.A.!” That is but a brief but encompassing glimpse into the enthusiasm that Hartford has brought into the gym at USA Volleyball. “We’ll be on the bike, and he’s always screaming at you,” Tri Bourne said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. Never is Hartford screaming in a negative light. He’s not a Navy commander, barking orders. He’s lifting up, encouraging, pushing, to the point that even someone like Alex Brouwer, the defender on the Netherlands’ top team and a former World Champ, can buy in. “I remember my first couple months, Trevor [Crabb] was like ‘Who the hell is this guy? He never shuts up!’” Hartford recalled, laughing. “That was my job. I want to make that weight room the most positive, engaging environment possible. That doesn’t mean we’re going to have full out conversations of how your wife and kids are doing or your boyfriend or girlfriend. But when you walk through the door, I’m going to greet you. When you’re in there training, I’m going to engage and music is going to be blasting.” Hartford knows, both from personal experience as an elite athlete himself and from half a decade of training college teams, it’s not a one-size-fits all approach. His day might consist of working with 44-year-old Jake Gibb in the morning on the sand, shifting to helping 23-year-old Sarah Sponcil in the afternoon and prescribing a weight program for indoor convert David Lee in the evening. “We always talk about individualization and how you’re going to be able to do this program because as beach volleyball players, you’re all going to need certain characteristics,” said Hartford, who walked on to Wake Forest as a quarterback and received his masters from Northwestern. “Athlete A may get it a lot differently than Athlete B but also Athlete C might have a much different strength in their game that needs to be focused on than Athlete B. So you have to take into account all these individualizations.” In that sense, it is perhaps Hartford’s greatest strength that, prior to USA Volleyball, he had little to no experience on the beach, but was an expert in virtually every other sport. As a quarterback at Wake Forest, he knew how to train football players. As a strength and conditioning coach at Northwestern, he worked with 115 athletes across a wide variety of disciplines. At Maryland, he helped with gymnastics, women’s lacrosse, wrestling, softball, and indoor volleyball. All of that switching made his ability to pick up a new sport, reverting back to a beginner’s mindset, that much easier. He didn’t walk onto the beach proclaiming to know everything. Instead, he acknowledged he knew little. He asked questions, attaining his own unofficial Beach Volleyball Certification through coaches like Rich Lambourne, Jen Kessy, Jose Loiola and Tyler Hildebrand. “Being around all these different sports as the strength coach, you don’t have any other choice but to learn everything about that sport,” Hartford said. “Diving in headfirst into whatever sport you’re working with and being at practice and asking coaches questions, watching film, going to competitions to see the environment and just the pure nature of each sport, I think that type of diversity in my coaching background helped me a ton with the transition to the beach.” Most athletic performance coaches would be able to do that, in some form or other. Some might take longer. Some might pick it up as quickly as Hartford, who is immensely popular among the athletes, has. But what separates Hartford from the other candidates who sought the job is that he brings more than an ability to prescribe a quality training regimen. For the first time in Bourne’s memory, there’s a tangible culture being set at USA Volleyball. “When I got here I asked Tyler Hildebrand ‘What are we trying to create here, culture wise? What environment are we trying to create?’” Hartford said. “We were striving for a new culture.” He acknowledges that it won’t be akin to a college team, that he’ll be working with Gibb and Bourne at the same time, despite them both vying for the same spot in the Tokyo Olympics. But still, you can find Chaim Schalk and Sponcil competing in Spikeball contests in the weight room. Athletes cheering their fellow athletes in pull-up contests. Others pushing one another on the assault bike. “Try training 18 gymnasts at 5 in the afternoon after practice,” Hartford said. “You need as much positive energy as you can in that moment so I’m used to creating that and that’s always been a part of my mission is to create the most positive, productive training environment possible. “To be in this environment where we have 25-30 athletes, it’s been incredible to build all of those relationships. Whenever you’re able to do that, you’re able to dive a lot deeper into the training process and thought process of what you’re doing. You’re also able to get a little more creative with your process as well. A huge piece has been being able to watch and talk to and see every single athlete as an individual perform and see what that person needs from a strength and conditioning side to get better. For me to be working with a specialized crew in a much smaller volume, it’s been a blessing because now I can see them practice, see them live, see how they jump, see how they swing and also talk to their coaches. You can really dive a lot deeper into these training programs.”

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.

Tri Bourne found a funny way to describe a learning moment he and Trevor Crabb had towards the end of the 2019 season, their first as partners and first as split-blockers. “Only at the end of the year did we figure out: ‘Oh, our timing is off. We’re not doing defense right,’” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. Not doing defense right? And still finishing 2019 as the second-ranked American team in the Olympic race? Still being ranked tenth in the world, finishing the season with a bronze medal at the Chetumal four-star? “It seems simple, but when you’re in the middle of the game, it’s really hard to implement a high level, sophisticated defense with all the right movements and everything,” Bourne said. “So in the middle of the year we were learning and trying to apply it but only some of it stuck. Basically, we think of last year as our foundation and now it’s time to grow on that.” Bourne and Crabb may be in the most interesting position as any team in the United States, male or female. They enter the season as one of the coveted two American teams who, if the Olympics were to take place tomorrow, would be competing in Tokyo. But the race is close enough that it doesn’t really matter, because the Olympics are not going to take place tomorrow, and at the end of the day, it will likely come down to the Rome Major in June. What Crabb and Bourne do have is this: An upside – and downside – that is entirely unknown. As Bourne mentioned, neither of them really knew what they were doing on defense last year, and they still finished fourth at the World Championships, taking both Russia’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum to three sets. Who knows what the potential upside could be? Then again, who knows how quickly they can begin to, in Bourne’s parlance, do defense right? Such a quandary is not a quandary at all for either Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb or Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena. Gibb, Dalhausser and Lucena have seven Olympics between them, and Taylor Crabb is on the short list of best defenders in the world. In other words: Defensively speaking, you know exactly what you’re going to get on their side of the net. With Bourne and Trevor Crabb? “There’s a lot of stuff to clean up,” Bourne said. “Continue to buy into the stuff that [coach] Jose [Loiola] is bringing to the table. We were spending so much time learning how to play this new style of volleyball that I don’t feel like I ever blocked the way I used to, not even close. So I’d like to get back to that for sure.” What Bourne is grateful for, at the moment, is the fact that he’s back in this situation at all: Six months of Olympic qualifying to go, sitting in the second American spot. It was only two years ago, sidelined with an autoimmune disease, that Bourne wasn’t sure if he’d be able to play beach volleyball again, let alone at a level that could qualify him for the Olympics. Now here he is, autoimmune disease under control, tenth-ranked team in the world – and he didn’t even “do defense right” the whole time. “If we play well and get better at volleyball, if we’re a better team, and we play better, and I become a better volleyball player, I’m good with the result,” Bourne said. “I’m gonna be pissed if we don’t make the Olympics. Don’t get me wrong. That is the goal, but what are you going to do? You got better. You improved. And these other teams did better? Ok, I’ll live with it. “Right after the last Olympic quad I was like ‘This is my time.’ It’s cool to be in this position and I’m super grateful and it’s going to be fun no matter what happens.”

Joe Houde had just begun his career with USA Volleyball, and there was a dead man was in the road. “Oh, yeah,” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Just not a good day.” It was certainly one way to start his stint as USA Volleyball’s newest traveling physical trainer. His first trip with the U.S., to a NORCECA in Guatemala. First time to a third-world country. And there was a dead man in the street. “It was eye opening,” Houde said. “I got off the plane, and I had never been to a third-world country before, and I was like, ‘Alright!’” It didn’t end there, of course, because this was a NORCECA and nobody knows when the NORCECA adventures will begin or end, only that they will happen, as inevitable as a sunrise. When Houde and the men’s team cabbed back to the airport, a ride the driver expected to take around a half an hour, the ride kept going, and going…and going. A little less than three hours later, the players sprinted through the airport, just making it in time. Houde was stuck in Guatemala for another day and a half, where he’d fly to Florida, Dallas, and then home, to Boston. “That,” he said, “was my first trip with USA Volleyball.” Some may view that as the worst possible start to a trainer’s career with USAV. Look at it from another perspective, however, and it may have been the best. For now Houde has the mindset that his next trip, to China, “was great!” and he said it with such enthusiasm that he genuinely meant it, making him potentially one of the first representatives from United States Volleyball to describe a trip to China as great. “I just love to travel. It doesn’t matter where I go. It’s about enjoying it, being with these guys, helping them get to where they need to be,” Houde, a Boston native, said. “I’m not going for vacation. I’m going to work. It’s either, ‘Ok, hopefully everybody loses so I can have a trip.’ Well, I don’t want that to happen. Let’s get on the podium so I have to work hard. It’s humbling.” Houde was there, for the final event of the season, in Chetumal, Mexico, for the most successful event of the season. He helped keep Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb and Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb fresh enough to win a pair of medals, a gold and a bronze, respectively. It was the first time the American men had won a medal in a four- or five-star since Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena took silver in Doha in March. That’s what he’s about, Houde. He doesn’t get any medals, but he wants nothing more than to see the men and women he’s there to support to come home with them. That’s how he got the job in the first place, anyway. When Sara Hughes was breaking into the professional scene, she recommended Houde, as they were both located in Orange County and he primarily worked on her for recovery. His foot was firmly in the door. Not that he travels much. USA Volleyball’s budget only allows Houde to travel a few times per year. And so, in between trips where he navigates dead bodies in the road in Guatemala, he has his own practice, Paradigm Chirosport, and also works with the men’s field hockey team, which won its first medal at the PanAm Games in 24 years.    Houde, of course, takes no credit. This is the guy who told the players to run through the airport so they could make it and he’d be stuck in Guatemala for an extra day and a half. “I’m a small one percent of their 99 percent,” he said. “It’s very humbling to work for these guys.”

  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.”

Theo Brunner was in need, he says, of a rebirth. Not quite a religious ceremony, but something to revitalize a beach volleyball career that had, while not sunk, gone a bit sideways. There was the chronic calf injury that flared up, a nod to the fact that he hadn’t really taken a full off-season in several years. There were the flashes of success – a silver at the Kuala Lumpur three-star with Reid Priddy – sprinkled in with missed opportunities – two crushing three-set losses in country quotas in Gstaad and Rome. The proverbial rebirth came in the most unwelcome of places, at the most unwelcome of times. Funny how it works like that. Theo Brunner was thrown back into an AVP qualifier. “At first I was super-bummed,” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, of he and John Hyden being seeded Q1 at AVP Chicago.  “But then I thought, this is good for me. It’s good to remember what it’s all about, see what everybody else has to go through every tournament, stop being all high horse, who cares about the qualifier. To get back in there was a nice thing.” It’s easy to say that in retrospect, of course. It would not have been easy for him to say that midway through the afternoon of August 29, when he and Hyden were down one set to none – 15-21, no less – to Jake Urrutia and Earl Schultz in the final round of the qualifier. Losing the second or the third would have meant the first failed attempt at an AVP main draw since 2009, when he and Matt Heagy fell in the second round in Ocean City. “I was like ‘Ah crap, what am I doing?’” Brunner said. “But it was a good reminder of the love of the grind, which you can forget sometimes.” Throughout literature, any moment of rebirth, of finding a new identity or rediscovering an old one, requires a trial. Brunner had his. And he and Hyden prevailed, winning the next two sets, 21-13, 15-7. It wouldn’t be until three weeks later, though, when he and Hyden were put back into the qualifier again, that they would return to the championship winning team they had been a year prior. It had barely been more than a calendar year since they won AVP Hermosa, coming back at the freeze to beat Billy Allen and Ryan Doherty, 16-14, in the third. They did that, however, as the one seed. In Hawai’i, for the final event of the year, they’d do so also as the one seed – in the qualifier.   Just as they did in Hermosa the year before, they returned to the final. And then the most poetic stories of the year came to a crashing halt. Hyden, at 47, would have broken his own record as the oldest to win an AVP title, in searing heat and shallow sand, no less. Had it not been for a Herculean performance from Taylor Crabb, Brunner and Hyden would have locked up the greatest storyline of the year. Alas, a 20-15 lead in the second set was undone by Crabb and Jake Gibb, just as another lead in the third was undone, thwarted once more by the Bug and Gibb. “Oh, Hawai’i,” Brunner lamented more than once on SANDCAST. “Still hurts.” And it will hurt for some time, to be sure, but never has there been a rebirth without a bit of discomfort. Brunner is now entering the off-season, his first blessed off-season in as long as he can remember, one of the most coveted free agents in the sport. Hyden has turned to Bill Kolinske, but after that, who knows where the chips may fall. Do Casey Patterson and Chase Budinger stay together? Billy Allen and Stafford Slick? Chaim Schalk and Jeremy Casebeer? Priddy? “It goes from the top down and I’ve been fortunate enough that I’m one of the guys people are waiting on,” he said. “I’ve been enjoying not being super focused on that stuff this off-season but I still have a bunch of people in mind and have chatted with a few different people. “My wife forced me to watch the bachelor and it just occurred to me that this is a lot like the bachelor. Just trying to find a mate for next season. It’s a lot like a relationship – this guy is really good at this, but I don’t know if we’d get along that well. It’s pretty funny.” And life, in beach volleyball, is fun again for Theo Brunner.

TEL AVIV, Israel – Tim Brewster was thousands of miles from his classrooms at UCLA. His seat in his 300-plus-student lectures was empty again, as it had been for the previous two weeks while he was in the Dominican Republic and the Middle East. And yet, while his classmates and peers were in their seats like good students, listening to the professors, taking their notes, studying, Brewster was getting an education of his own, the same unofficial independent study he’d been getting for the previous three years.   It is one thing to learn about the religions of the world, a class he took with that very name. It is entirely another to stroll the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem, to walk the Via Dolarosa, to see the 14 stations of the cross, to touch the Western Wall, to hear the calls for prayer at the site where Mohammed ascended and descended from heaven. It is one thing to learn of the poverty of countries like Cuba, and to listen to professors discuss the dangers of men like Fidel Castro. It is another to arrive on your first international beach volleyball trip as a 17-year-old in Havana, and to run out of running water one night, lose power for two, be bereft of functional wifi and any means of communication to the outside world, all the while being subjected to misleading government propaganda.  No, Tm Brewster may not be in the classroom as much as his professors may like. But rest assured, he’s getting an education of his own. “Definitely more valuable than college,” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. And he said this, of course, not from a classroom or anywhere close to it. He said it at the kitchen table in an AirBNB in Tel Aviv, where he played in his fifth one-star FIVB of the year, finishing with a career-high fifth. He said it after eating in Old Town Jaffa, after praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, after hearing gunshots ring out from war-torn Jordan as he floated in the Dead Sea. “I’m going to these places that I’ve learned about in school before, which is awesome. I’m getting the real-world experience of it,” he said. “I’m getting to see these cultures and learn a bunch, especially from the people I’m traveling with, because a lot of people I travel with are older. I wouldn’t miss this stuff for the world. “I took a religion class last quarter and it was all about Christianity, Judaism and Islam and it’s what we saw today, all day. I’ve never really experienced that. It was crazy.” Talk with Brewster and, aside from the boyish face and the body that hasn’t quite filled out yet, you would be hard-pressed to pin him as a teenager still finding his way in the world. This season alone, which coincided with his current sophomore year at UCLA, he competed in seven international tournaments. He’s competed against Olympians and AVP champions. He’s been coached by some of the all-time greats. He is 19 yet is surrounded by some of the most elite players and voices in the sport. “It’s weird because these are guys I’ve looked up to for the last five or six years since I was 14 and playing,” he said. “It’s weird that I’m playing against them now. I’m still not there yet but I can see the progress from where I’ve come from and where I’m heading and it’s pretty exciting. It’s really cool, though, getting to play guys at that high of a level and you get to see the things they do well that you don’t.” At 19, Brewster is considered precocious by U.S. standards in beach volleyball. Nearly every Olympic Games is a testament to the States’ delayed development system. In 2016, the four United States players – Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, Jake Gibb and Casey Patterson – were surpassed in age only by one. Of the six players on the top three U.S. teams with a legitimate shot at making the Tokyo Games, four are older than 30, another, Trevor Crabb, is only a few months shy, and the other, Taylor Crabb, is 26. And yet there is Brewster, alongside his equally young and aspirational peers in John Schwengel, Miles and Marcus Partain, and Kacey Losik, the few youngsters in the U.S. breaking in before their mid-20s. This year was a watershed one for all: Brewster made his first FIVB main draw, Schwengel cracked into AVP Hawai’i for his first main draw, Marcus Partain made it in Manhattan Beach, Miles won the AVP Rookie of the Year. To the United States, they’re young, babies on tour. To the rest of the world’s 19- and 20- year olds, they’re quite normal. “There’s not a lot of guys my age who are committed only to beach,” Brewster said. “There’s John Schwengel and I, who are basically the only two who are only playing beach without playing indoor. “A lot of these [international] kids specialize early, and a lot of these countries have academies. We don’t really have anything like that. I think the high performance does a good job but it’s hard to compete with a country like Brazil who has their kids living in a facility, training year-round.” And so he has created his own developmental system, both on the court and off. On the court, he trains with USA Volleyball’s high performance program when it’s in session and with Jose Loiola when it’s not. Off the court, he is still figuring out his major at UCLA while seeing a great many of his lectures play out in real life while he competes internationally.  “Cuba was my first international trip and it was just wild,” he said. “There’s no way to describe it but just wild and crazy. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, and everything we expected wasn’t there. “It definitely taught me how to travel in a different way. I’m trashing Cuba but it was one of the most fun trips of my life. There’s something about adversity that bonds you to the people around you. There’s something about traveling. Nothing else matters but can you talk to each other, can you have fun, can you get through these crazy experiences together. It’s the little things like that that make traveling internationally to play volleyball so cool. The friends you make, the things you get to see, doing what you love, nothing beats it. It’s amazing.” He’s back in school now, Brewster. Cramming for tests. Finishing papers he’s put off. Getting the education most Americans his age are accustomed to. Soon enough, though, he’ll be back on the road, on planes, figuring out how to get from one airport to the next, how to find edible food in China, bottled water in Cuba, seeing with his own eyes the religions of the world. “Almost,” he said, “like college on the road.” 

In this week’s Quest for Gold, Team USA men’s basketball loses not once, but twice in two days! How did the mens’ beach volleyball duo of Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb do in Rome? A rhythmic gymnast from Libertyville does well in Portugal. Serena Williams falls short of winning the U.S. Open. And WGN’s Ryan […]

Casey Patterson is my guest this week. Casey is a professional beach volleyball player and family man. See below for the listing of his volleyball accomplishments…..it’s a really long list. Volleyball is only one aspect of this successful businessman and family man. We bonded over the similarities in our careers with the fact that if we don’t perform in our jobs we don’t make money for our families. Casey shares some stories of his travels, 100K miles over the summer, and how he and his wife, Lexi, raise their 4 children. We discuss the growth of beach volleyball and what it was like for him to represent his country in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Casey goes into more detail about what is really involved in being a professional athlete and some of the money making opportunities that are available for the players. Olympic Experience 2016 Olympic Games (tied for 19th with Jake Gibb) World Championship Experience 2017 World Championships (tied for 17th with Theo Brunner) 2015 World Championships (tied for 5th with Jake Gibb) 2013 World Championships (4th place with Jake Gibb) Other Career Highlights Finished fifth at the 2015 Beach World Championships with Jake Gibb. Duo was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Brazil With Gibb, named USA Volleyball’s Beach Team of the Year for 2013 and AVP's 2014 men's Team of the Year Has competed in four 2019 FIVB World Tour events, three with Slick. Tied for 9th in The Hague with new partner Chase Budinger Competed in eight 2018 FIVB World Tour events with Stafford Slick. Best finish was third at Tokyo three-star Played in six 2018 AVP Tour events with Slick. Best finish was third in Austin In 2017, partnered with Theo Brunner and posted a best finish of fourth on the FIVB World Tour; duo had two third-place finishes on the domestic AVP Tour At the 2016 Olympics, Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson lost to Spain 21-19, 16-21, 15-7, making them 1-2 in pool play. The pair officially tied for 19th when they were eliminated after pool play due to point differential During the 2016 season, finished fourth two times with Gibb for their best finishes on the FIVB World Tour Took fifth place at the 2015 Hamburg Major, finishing Olympic qualification with best finishes of one gold (St. Petersburg) and one silver (Olsztyn) Tied for seventh at the inaugural FIVB World Tour Finals (2015) with Jake Gibb On the 2016 AVP Tour, won three events with Gibb, including Huntington Beach and Manhattan Beach Partnered with Jake Gibb during the 2013 season, when both players were left without partners for the first tournament of the year. On the FIVB Tour between 2013-16, duo had two golds, silver and bronze 2013 AVP Best Offensive Player; Only team to advance to seven semifinals as the top-ranked team on the 2013 AVP Tour While partnered with Ryan Doherty in 2012, the duo participated in two AVP events, one NVL tournament and seven Jose Cuervo events where they won twice and had three other podium finishes Named MVP in the 2010 Puerto Rican indoor league Competed in the indoor Swedish Elite Professional League as an outside hitter for the Falkenberg professional team, and led team to the finals where they won the gold medal Played for Club Santa Barbara in high school

Phil Dalhausser, Nick Lucena, Jake Gibb, and Taylor Crabb talk to WGN’s Ryan Burrow about Olympic qualifications after wrapping up the AVP Gold Series Championships in Chicago last weekend.

Welcome back to Starting Point with Casey Jennings. We hope you've enjoyed the show so far. With school back in session and the summer drawing to a close, we are going to take a short break to regroup, plan our next series of 8 episodes, and work on delivering an even more compelling and polished product for our listeners. So far you've heard from Olympic gold medalists including Natalie Cook and Eric Fonoi, learned what it's like to be a transgender child in today's world, peered into the mind of Jake Gibb, and been touched by Chris Crabb's stories of fatherhood and resiliency. We look forward to continuing this Starting Point journey with you and will see you in October.

In the first installment of our two-part interview with Jake Gibb, you will hear all about Jake's childhood including growing up the youngest of 11 children in Bountiful, Utah. The son of a hardworking pediatrician, Jake learned mental toughness from his Dad out on the golf course at a young age. Jake even learned how to meditate when he was 11 years old, a skill he still utilizes to this day. After spending his early years playing soccer and basketball, Jake happened upon the sport of volleyball at 17 after being cut from his high school basketball team. What was initially a backyard throwaway sport quickly turned into a passion and while Jake was studying to become a commercial loan officer at the University of Utah, he soon found himself winning every tournament on the local UOVA outdoor volleyball circuit. Soon after, Jake began competing in AVP qualifiers and when he started to excel, he quietly wondered if beach volleyball was something he could pursue full time. Just a couple of years later, after marrying Jane in 2000 and graduating from college, Jake decided to shelf the commercial loan officer gig and take a chance on his beach game by moving out to California. The rest is history as they say, and you'll get a detailed recap of Jake's career including all of the ups and downs in this episode of Starting Point. Enjoy!

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

In the second half of this two-part interview, Casey sits down with 3-time beach volleyball Olympian Jake Gibb to chat about appreciation and taking pride in one's own journey. After clearing up some miscommunications that occurred in Part 1 (coming soon!), Casey and Jake take some time to chat about beach volleyball, ownership, and how to best handle a struggling teammate. Then the conversation shifts to Jake's father and some valuable life lessons that Jake learned along the way and is still applying in his pursuit of excellence. Finally, Jake and Casey chat about religion and spirituality before wrapping up with a brief foray into youth and club sports. Please enjoy the second episode of Starting Point and be on the lookout for Jake Gibb (Part 1) coming soon!

Host Bill Goodman is joined by Councilman Jake Gibbs of District 3 in Lexington. Councilman Gibbs taught history and logic at the Bluegrass Community and Technical College from 1988-2014. He is a leading expert on the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book series. The Little Blue Books were published from 1919 through 1978 by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company. In 2007, Councilman Gibbs was awarded a fellowship by the Bibliographical Society of America to facilitate research for his descriptive bibliography of the 2300 titles in the series.

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

Tyler Hildebrand doesn’t really know what you should call him. “Official title is Director of Coaching,” he said of his new role at USA Volleyball. But they’re working on title changes because, candidly, nobody really knows what that means. “At the end of the day,” Hildebrand said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “who really cares? I think some people call it coach, head coach, director of coaching. I did some presentations at the AVCA and nobody knew what the heck the title was.” What matters is not the title Hildebrand takes – or doesn’t take – but the role he plays. He was hired by USA Volleyball, after just a year at Nebraska in which he won a national championship as an assistant coach, to push the United States back on top of the world of beach volleyball. Ask most any player, and you’ll get the same response: They picked the right guy. Hildebrand is what you could call a player’s coach. He was there at Long Beach State, his alma mater, last Friday night, watching the 49ers take on then-undefeated Hawai’i. He was there with Taylor Crabb, arguably the most promising and talented beach player in the United States. Beach in the morning. Indoor at night. Volleyball all day long. That, if nothing else, is why Hildebrand is so good at what he does. And he is good. After setting for Long Beach from 2003-2006, leaving as a three-time All-American, Hildebrand has enjoyed success everywhere he has gone. As an associate head coach for Long Beach in 2016 and 2017, he helped the Niners to consecutive NCAA semifinals. In his lone year at Nebraska, in 2017, the Huskers won an NCAA Championship. On the beach, he oversaw the most successful run of Casey Patterson’s career, there in the box as Patterson and Jake Gibb established themselves as the top team on the AVP Tour, winning more than double the next team. He was there for a Manhattan Beach Open win and an Olympic berth.   But again: Don’t call him coach. Hildebrand doesn’t just oversee one team anymore – he oversees the development of all of the top teams and prospects in the USA Volleyball system, everyone from the established talents in Jake Gibb and John Hyden to the promising prospects in Carly Wopat and Troy Field. “Our vision right now at USAV Beach, it’s to be the best students at our craft,” Hildebrand said. “And I know that sounds like a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, blah blah blah. But the people who are really excelling right now are at the learning or technological edge.” Hildebrand has an old soul, but still: There’s a wealth of technology and statistics in the sport. It’s time the United States began using it to its advantage. Which is why, more often than not, you can find Hildebrand in the film room, either with the athletes or just by himself. It’s possible that nobody on Earth has watched more film in the past year than Hildebrand, who is constantly searching for trends – quick sets, shoot sets, options, jump serving, float serving, whatever. “In beach volleyball, what I realized when I came out here five or six years ago, it was like ‘Whoa, in indoor we would use video,’” Hildebrand said. But in the beach? “We’d watch maybe a set,” Bourne said. It’s something Hildebrand is trying to change. Not radically. Not revolutionarily. Just a bit here and there. An hour or so every few days. Watch yourself. Watch opponents. Just watch the game. See what you can find. “One thing I’ve been doing, probably more than any other coach in the United States, is watching the game,” Hildebrand said. “Watching the world. That’s the one I’m pushing big with our athletes and coaches. All of this stuff, maybe we’ll see something, ‘Wow! That’s useful!’ And then asking the question why. “The hardest part about beach volleyball is that everybody is on their own. You can have great practices. You can work really hard. You can be really tough. But in the middle of the game, how do we think through the game? Let’s say we watched a couple matches, we can think through them.” So he’ll pour over the film. He’ll find the trends. He’ll present them to the athletes and from there, they can make of it what they will. It’s not his job to coach every specific team now. It’s to simply put them in a position to be as successful as possible. So if there’s one thing you could label Hildebrand – not coach, not director, not a director of coaching – it’s this: He is, simply, one of the most passionate people in beach volleyball.    

The relationship between brothers is often too complicated for even brothers to fully understand, let alone communicate to the world beyond, especially when their immediate world beyond knows their life history – where they grew up and went to high school, where they went to college and what they’ve done since. When you throw into that the fact that the two brothers in mind – Taylor and Trevor Crabb – were, for a period of two years, also simultaneously maintaining the most volatile of relationships – business partners, roommates, volleyball partners, running among the same group of friends – it would have been quite curious if they didn’t fight a bit than to the extent they did. So yes, when Taylor and Trevor Crabb played beach volleyball together, as they did at the professional level in 2015 and 2016 and in various tournaments in 2011 and 2013, there were times they didn’t get along. And there were times – almost all the time, really – on the court, that it just didn’t matter. “It’s every partnership,” Taylor said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “The longer you’re with someone, the more stuff is going to get on your nerves. Being brothers just amplifies it that much more. For the most part we were able to put it behind us and perform, and we played great for the year and a half that we were together. But just like every partnership it gets harder and harder as it goes on.” Watch any sibling partnership and you will see much of the same. Nicole and Megan McNamara at UCLA “will say things to each other they would never say to a different partner,” former Bruin assistant coach Jeff Alzina said. But they’re able to snipe at each other, to demand more, because they’re sisters. The McKibbins, Riley and Maddison, are no different. This is just what siblings do. They demand more. Expect more. And besides, it’s not as if a true blood relationship is needed to dig at one another. Growing up, the Hawaiian crew – the Crabbs, Bourne, McKibbins, Brad Lawson, Spencer McLaughlin – simply labeled Taylor “little shit.” Nobody is quicker to talk a little trash to Trevor than Bourne, his own partner, and vice versa. “They still try to give me crap,” Taylor said, “but it’s getting harder to.” The point in their careers is a rare one for siblings of any sort in the sense that, 18 months from now, it is not all that unlikely to see both Crabbs in the Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020. Taylor and Jake Gibb are the No. 2 team in the U.S., Bourne and Trevor No. 3. “You really gotta stay present in it,” Bourne said. “It’s such a long process. As much as our sport weighs on Olympics, you want that label, that’s everyone’s dream, it’s literally one tournament of your whole career. If you get caught up in two years of that certain event putting pressure on every other event, you’re really wasting your time. You just had a great finish on the world tour? Enjoy that. Be there.” And so the process begins. Taylor and Gibb are in Sydney this week for a three-star, their first event of the Olympic push and of the 2019 season. Trevor and Bourne skipped Sydney, focusing instead on a four-star in Doha the following week. By 2020, three kids from the Outrigger Canoe Club could be donning the red, white, and blue. “It’s pretty nuts,” Bourne said. “We were – well, we still are – cocky little shits.” You see, whether the birth certificates say so or not, this Hawaiian bunch is a family. And, like most competitive siblings, the trash talk never stops, no matter what side of the net you’re on.

To be honest, the sound bye you’re looking for in this podcast comes around the three-minute mark. You can fast forward there if you’d like. Tri Bourne, taking SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter on the road for a training camp in Florida, asks Phil Dalhausser and his coach, Jason Lochhead if they are all in for the upcoming quad. “Yep.” “Yep.” Two words. All you need to know. Dalhausser and Nick Lucena are all in for the two-year push for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.   Over the past few months, as it goes with beach volleyball, there has been no shortage of speculation in regards to the career plans of Dalhausser and Lucena. Rumors of retirement. Rumors of partner switching. Rumors of one final push. All of those rumors, dispelled with a simple yep. “It’s going to be quite a battle this time around,” said Bourne, who narrowly missed qualifying for the 2016 Olympics with John Hyden, edged out by Dalhausser and Lucena and Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb. With Dalhausser and Lucena confirming they’re intentions for the upcoming Olympic race, a battle is exactly what it will be. Dalhausser and Lucena will be slotted as the unquestioned favorites, followed by Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb and then a mess of three to six teams – Bourne and Trevor Crabb, Billy Allen and Stafford Slick, Reid Priddy and Theo Brunner, Ryan Doherty and John Hyden, Miles Evans and Billy Kolinske, Casey Patterson and Chase Budinger – all of whom could reasonably make an international push. Which makes the preseason work all that more important. After the Fort Lauderdale Major was cancelled, Bourne and Crabb simply kept their tickets and decided to train with Dalhausser and Lucena, hence the Florida-based podcasts and a week of two-a-day practices and Brazilian BBQ with coach Jose Loiola and the girls team, Sara Hughes and Summer Ross, at night. “Jose saw we had a big break after Fort Lauderdale got canceled so he wanted to get us out of California and switch it up,” Crabb said. “It’s a good idea. You get, over and over again practicing the same thing for two months straight in California is a little much. Especially when you get the opportunity to train against Phil and Nick, one of the best teams in the world, it’s good.” Bourne and Crabb are still experimenting with their approach to an Olympic quad. They’re trying out a new system – split-blocking – new sides, new offenses, new everything. For Dalhausser and Lucena, who have a combined four Olympics between them, while Lucena had a narrow miss in 2012, this is nothing new. “When I come in, it’s not like I tell you what to do,” said Lochhead, who coached Canada in the 2016 Olympic Games. “It’s, ‘We have three minds, let’s check out ideas and what things are going to be the best.’ It won’t work if I just come home and tell them what to do. They have a ton of experience. They know what’s going on. I always think, if you tell someone what to do, in their mind, it’s hard for them to really do it because they don’t truly believe it but if you talk it out with them and hear their thoughts and hear their ideas it almost becomes their idea and their thought then they truly believe it and go 100 percent at it.” For one final Olympics, Dalhausser and Lucena are 100 percent in.  

No matter the country or tournament or prize money on the line, it is never an especially difficult task to identify which is the room of Chad Beauchamp. It’s the one overflowing with overgrown humans, with massagers, tables, tape, ice. “Chad has a bed for the athletes, a table, his bed that we’re not supposed to use but most of us sit on it anyway,” Tri Bourne said, laughing on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “We get legitimately excited when we know Chad is traveling with us.” Beauchamp is, among many roles, one of the physical therapists who travels for USA Beach Volleyball. It’s a position he stumbled into beginning in 2012 with a combination of a phenomenal education, innovative techniques, and, of course, a small dose of serendipity. “I had been doing some U.S. Surfing stuff,” Beauchamp said. “At that time, I got asked to do a tournament with USA Beach Volleyball.” They wanted to know if he could go to Germany in a month. He had no idea it was a $300,000 Grand Slam. That it was a critical tune-up for the London Olympics two weeks later. “I was like, ‘Alright,’” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I just kind of got thrown in there.” Now he’s going on seven years with USA Beach Volleyball and is also the trainer tabbed to work with Kerri Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat, a pair of athletes with notoriously cranky shoulders. “This year is going to be cool,” he said. “I plan on going to Moscow with USA Volleyball but this year, specifically, Brooke is coming off her last surgery, it’s been challenging for her the past couple of years, so I’m going to travel a little more specifically with her and Kerri.” For the past several seasons, Beauchamp has been the man trusted with some of the most valuable shoulders in volleyball, from Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb in their leadup to the 2016 Olympics to Irene Pollock and now to Walsh Jennings and Sweat, who are making the push to Tokyo’s 2020 Games. “I’ve always looked at rehab and recovery as the glue that holds it all together, all the training and all that kind of stuff,” Beauchamp said, which is why stretching is as important as lifting, massaging as critical as setting, breathing as vital as hitting. “It’s all connected, and sometimes people don’t know, either. You may not even know that if you get a little more range of motion in your t-spine or if you can open up your hips a little more you can jump higher or cock your arm back more and can give you more power. Those are the things we’re looking for. We’re trying to find all of those things. “If you lack the range of motion in your hips, and you’re not getting the muscles firing in the right sequence, and if you’re not able to twist in your t-spine the right way or engage your core the right way, you’re losing power in your shoulder. And then what you try to do is you try to force it more and that’s when you start to tear your labrum and your rotator cuff and whatever else.” A conversation with Beauchamp is almost like a lesson in Kinesiology 101 combined with Meditation 101 combined with Weight Training 101, and that’s sort of the point. A visit with Beauchamp won’t result in a simple diagnosis and recovery plan – no more “ice and rest” advice. It will be specific, catered to each individual, an all-encompassing calendar hitting every aspect, from the mental side of things to the strengthening to the recovery. “Piecing all those components together,” he said, “is how we get the better performance.” And how his hotel room is the one perpetually overcrowded. 

The talk always turned to Taylor. As Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb grew and developed as a new team, climbing the world ranks, piling up wins that once could have been perceived as upsets – over 2017 World Champs Andre and Evandro, over Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, over Italians and 2016 silver medalists Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo – most looked to Crabb, the 26-year-old quicksilver fast defender, as the reason for that success. It’s a justifiable stance, and not entirely wrong. But Gibb, appearing on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, while giving Crabb his due, also pointed to another source of that success: Rich Lambourne. “We’ve got a guy with a gold medal around his neck,” he said. Not that you’ll hear Lambourne mention that gold medal, earned as a libero on the U.S. indoor team in the 2008 Olympics. In nearly an hour on SANDCAST, it came up just once, in passing. The vast majority of his many accolades went unmentioned as well – Best Libero of the World League in 2007, NORCECA Continental Championship 2007 gold medal, being named best libero as the U.S. won their first World League title in 2008, the fact that he played in every set of the Beijing Olympics in which the Americans won gold. No, that just wouldn’t be Lambourne, a paragon of humility, self-deprecation and sarcasm. A struggle of many players-turned-coaches is turning off the player inside them, one that Brazilian Jose Loiola admitted he struggled with. Lambourne laughed. He had no such struggle. “What’s been interesting to me, it’s been a huge and ongoing learning process for me because I don’t have personal, professional frame of reference to the game,” Lambourne said. “Jose has 20 years of repetitions and tournaments that he went through in this particular discipline of the sport, and I don’t. I have, I think, some technical expertise that has some high degree of transfer that I can bring, but the rest of it – strategy, how can we accomplish getting that team out of system, or how can we accomplish putting them in positions we want them to be in that are advantageous for us, it’s vastly different outside than it is inside. So all that stuff is stuff I had to learn, stuff that I’m still learning, that’s still evolving. “So that’s been the challenging, and what’s been fun.” They’ve created a collaborative dynamic, Lambourne, Gibb and Crabb, begat from three vastly different perspectives on the game. Lambourne is the indoor specialist with a sharp mind for the game. Gibb is one of the all-time greats, a three-time Olympian with a likelihood of making that four. Crabb has set himself firmly in the conversation as one of the best defenders in the world. “I try to bring what I have to them, and they try and fill in the gaps with, in Jake’s case, 20 years of experience at the highest level,” Lambourne said. “And in Taylor’s relatively short career, how much amazing stuff has he done? So I’m never going ‘Uh, no, let’s do this.’ I’m saying ‘Here’s what I think, here’s what you think, so let’s decide so we’re all on the same page.’” That same page, at the moment, has put Crabb and Gibb as arguably the best team in the United States. It's put them on track for Lambourne to appear in his third Olympics, Gibb his fourth, Crabb his third. Just don't expect Lambourne to take much, if any, credit.  "No, I take full credit for Taylor's success," Lambourne said, laughing.  So there it is, the only type of credit Lambourne will take: the sarcastic type, full of self-deprecation, and nothing about the gold medal hanging from his neck.   

Travis Mewhirter published his book, We Were Kings, on December 5. You can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble! I’ll always remember the first interview. It was September of 2016. I was sitting on my bed in my studio in Newport Beach. That bed also doubled as my office, seeing as my apartment was roughly 600 square feet and had room for a bed, kitchen, and TV, all within arm’s length of each other. On the other end of the phone was Tri Bourne – Tri Bourne! The guy I watched roof John Mayer on match point of the 2015 AVP Huntington Beach Open on the first weekend I had moved to California. The guy I had dug deep into YouTube to watch virtually every snippet of film I could find. That Tri Bourne. And for an hour and a half, Tri talked about whatever it was that I wanted to talk about. You’re writing a book? Cool. What’s it on? It was a great question at the time, and it remained a great question over the next two years. The umbrella topic was easy enough: It was on beach volleyball. It was on beach volleyball because, when I had first picked up the game at a bar in Florida called Juana’s Pagodas, I had done what all good nerds do when assuming a new hobby: I went to Amazon and ordered every piece of literature I could on the topic. Which was nothing. There were drill books, sure, and instructional stuff. But I wanted to know about the game. I wanted its history, in all its rich detail. I wanted to know the players, the people, the events. I wanted to know everything. Only, in book form, there wasn’t much of anything to know. So my second interview was with a man named Kevin Cleary. My good friend, John Braunstein, set it up in a way. I told him I was working on writing a book o beach volleyball, and he told me Cleary was a guy I needed to talk to. So I sent Cleary a message on Facebook, waited a month or two for a reply, and when he did, we decided to play a AA CBVA in Manhattan Beach together. It wound up being an all-day affair, Cleary regaling me tales of beach volleyball’s past, how he became the AVP’s first president, how the AVP was formed in protest of rule changes, how things were done in the old-school days. Slowly, I began picking the contact lists of Bourne and Cleary. From Bourne’s list, I was digging into the modern player; from Cleary’s, the first generation of professionals. In a single week, I’d speak to Sinjin Smith and Carl Henkel, the 1996 Olympic team and the cause of so much unnecessary controversy, and also Riley and Maddison McKibbin. I’d talk to Karch Kiraly and Tim Hovland, followed up by Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb – the legends of past and present. Within a year, I had interviewed more than 100 players across various generations of beach volleyball, and when I sat down to look over the roughly 800 pages of notes, I still had absolutely no clue where to begin or what, exactly, I was doing with all of this information, which was pure, untainted beach volleyball gold. Becoming a player helped clarify that. To be clear, my name, in the context of playing beach volleyball, should not be mentioned in the same sentence as men like Bourne, Patterson, Gibb, Dalhausser, Lucena, all of whom have enormous roles in the book. But becoming a player, experiencing the wondrous grind of working up the ranks in beach volleyball as it stands today, illuminated exactly the project I wanted to publish: Why in the world do people spend so much time, energy and money and sacrifice so much of themselves to play beach volleyball? Financially, it makes no sense. The term fiscal responsibility is a paradox when spoken of in the realm of beach volleyball. In the mid-to-later playing days of Kiraly, Dodd, Smith, Stoklos – all the names you’ll see in the CBVA Hall of Fame – it wasn’t so incomprehensible, to be financially stable and a beach volleyball player. They could gross half a million in a single year. But over the years, with the AVP changing hands so frequently, from Leonard Armato to Jeff Dankworth to Jerry Solomon to Armato to Donald Sun with various hedge funds and financial institutions subbing intermittently in between, the game has struggled to find a firm footing. As such, it’s struggled to provide the type of consistency that its athletes could live off of, all of which served to create two fascinating questions for me: How do men even stumble into this game, and why do they continue to do it? I sent my first manuscript, a 120,000-word monster of a thing, to my wizard editor lady, Ann Maynard, who has overseen a number of New York Times bestsellers. The content was great, she said, and the stories captivating. But I covered too much ground too fast. She felt like she was in a literary drag race that was at once exhilarating and severely confusing. She gave me two options: Pick half the book and focus only on that, repurposing the other material for blogs, stories, magazines, whatever. Or just split the book in two – one digging into the modern player, the other detailing beach volleyball’s ascent to becoming an Olympic sport. It made sense to publish the former option first, seeing as the information was going to be dated very quickly, while the latter, being historical, has no expiration date or need for expediency. So the next year, that’s what I set out to do, separating the information, outlining, outlining again, outlining one more time, then another, before sending it to Ann.  We settled on a structure, with each chapter being a stop in the 2016 season, each stop digging into a different facet of the game – the difficulty of qualifying, the difficulty of qualifying enough to be a consistent main draw player, the difficulty of sustaining being a main draw player while also holding enough side jobs to stay afloat, the difficulty of sustaining being a main draw player while also holding enough side jobs to stay afloat while also attempting to raise a family. Each chapter adds another layer, another dynamic of this game that, to me, is nothing short of fascinating. Throughout, you’ll read the stories of men who are at the top and the bottom, of the Dalhaussers of the world and the Chris Luerses – the legends and the constant qualifiers. You’ll read about men who have made it and men who are still trying and might never actually do it. And you’ll read about why – why they continue going for it, despite so much suggesting they should do otherwise, why they love the game that so rarely loves them back in any tangible way. Why they continue to push for just one more day at the beach.

As if his path to beach volleyball wasn’t unique enough – raised in Minnesota, little to no volleyball background aside from a little club indoor, not a clue who men named Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser were – in his nine-year career thus far, Stafford Slick may have authored his own personal record book. Name another who has played with six different Olympians, including three gold medalists. Or anyone crazy enough to play in 17 – 17! – different NORCECAs with eight different partners. “We might have to do some fact checking,” Slick said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “But I think I’ve played with more Olympians than anyone else. I played with Dain [Blanton], retired him, put him out to pasture. I played with Rogie [Todd Rogers] in his last event, so I retired him. I played with Rosie [Sean Rosenthal], I played with Casey [Patterson], I played with Adrian [Carambula], who wasn’t an Olympian at the time, but he is now. And then I played with Reid Priddy. That’s another thing I might have a record for: I have a lot of partners too.” For an individual who has been playing beach volleyball for a hair over nine years, indeed, Slick has gone through his fair share of partners, though that’s less a detractor from his talent than it is an indicator of it. It’s only so often you get a coordinated, athletic, hand-setting 6-foot-8 blocker out of Minnesota. “I guess those guys saw something in me,” Slick said. And of all people, it was Blanton, a gold medalist, who saw it first. Slick was in his cabin in Minnesota for a July 4 getaway in 2010 when he got the call: Blanton, a gold medalist alongside Eric Fonoimoana in the 2000 Sydney Games, wanted to give Slick a shot. They’d be automatically in the main draw, Slick’s first. He wouldn’t even have to qualify. “It was huge for me,” Slick said. “Dain was kinda poking around, looking for a big man to play with because it was the tenth anniversary of his gold medal. So he was kind of connected with some of the people in the USA office and they dropped my name.” And just like that, Slick had his first of many accomplished partners. And yet, funnily enough, his unofficial Olympic partnership record may have never happened without his willingness to play in his unofficial record number of NORCECAs that, frankly, borderlines on absurd. “I don’t think that would happened without me playing all those NORCECAs,” he said. Because about those NORCECAs: They were on a lower international tier than they are now. When Slick moved to California in 2009, NORCECAs didn’t count for international points. The prize money, even if you won, wouldn’t cover the expenses for the majority of the tournaments. The incentive for American teams was, well, what was the incentive? In Slick’s case, to put your name on the map. “In 2009 and 2010, it was trying to scrounge and figure out a way to keep playing, and at the time, NORCECAs didn’t count for international points, so it was just sign up,” Slick said. “Back when I started playing it was ‘Hey can we play in this tournament?’ and they said ‘Great!’” So he did. He played with Mark Burik and Billy Allen, Even Engle and Will Montgomery, John Mayer and Casey Jennings, Priddy and Marcin Jagoda. Seventeen of them. Enough to get Slick on the map. Enough to get him a partnership with a gold medalist in just his second year attempting to qualify. Enough to kickstart a career that, two years from now, could turn Slick into an Olympian himself. Indeed, he has come a long way from the guy with the blonde Viking locks who didn’t know who Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser were. Back with Allen, with whom he won his first AVP tournament, Slick is no underdog to make Tokyo, should that be their goal. "When it came time to make that decision, it was something that just fit," he said. "It was something that just made sense. That was a big part of our conversation was 'Do our goals align? Are we making a run for Tokyo?' I"m excited. I'm hopeful." Popular on SANDCAST:SANDCAST: Eric Zaun, the Happy Gilmore of the AVP TourSANDCAST: Taylor Crabb, AVP Seattle championSANDCAST: Sarah Sponcil, Pac-12 Champ, National Champ, AVP FinalistSANDCAST: Jake Gibb ain't finished playing yet!SANDCAST: Tri Bourne is BACK ON THE BEACH Train like the pros, with the pros, at VolleyCamp Hermosa! Recover the right way with Firefly: Accelerated Athletic Recovery Choose the ball the pros use. Choose Wilson and use our discount code: WILSONSAND FOR 20 PERCENT OFF!

John Mayer stood outside the player’s tent, not looking particularly disappointed despite being knocked out of the Huntington Beach Open less than an hour prior. He and Trevor Crabb had played their best match yet, he said. Norway’s then-relatively unknown youngsters, Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, had simply played better. “The blocker,” Mayer said, “reminds me of Phil [Dalhausser].” A 20-year-old kid? Compared to Phil Dalhausser? Had it been almost anyone else making that statement, an eye roll, a sigh, would have been acceptable. But Mayer isn’t one to simply dole out hyperbolic comments or undeserved praise. By year’s end, his comparison didn’t seem absurd, rather prescient. Eight months later, Mol and Sorum are the undisputed best team in the world, and indeed, Mol was named the FIVB Blocker of the Year, with Sorum claiming Defender of the Year. As a team, they won Gstaad, and Vienna, and Hamburg, and then made yet another final in San Jose. “If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that anyone would win three tournaments in a row,” Sorum said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “I would have said absolutely not.” Perhaps only Mayer could have foreseen it. There’s no real reason anyone could have forecasted the breakthrough, not to these heights, at least. Prior to the Gstaad Major in mid-July, a Norwegian beach volleyball team hadn’t won a medal since 1997. The same year Mol was born. It was uncanny, their poise in such a moment.   “We didn’t think about that at all,” Mol said. “You can’t think about that at all or you’ll lose. You have to stay in your own bubble. We don’t think about the crowd. We don’t think about what if we win and what can happen if we win. We just think about our game and the next ball and what we’re going to do and make a plan for every ball. “When you see the videos we are really calm and really focused and not that many emotions from us.” “We also,” Sorum added, “had a little bit of luck.” They’re endearing, these Norwegians. Impossibly humble for such accomplished athletes, ones who rose from the qualifiers to the top of the world in half a year’s time. It’s a humility begat from both being products of a small town – Mol’s village has 500 “inhabitants,” as he described it – and taking the time to see the world in all of its massive beauty. They’re volleyball players, yes, but they’ve taken on much more than that. They don’t simply bounce from hotel to hotel, AirBNB to AirBNB. There’s more to life than volleyball for them. “I was sad for like two minutes in Hawai’i,” Sorum said, “and then I was like ‘Yes! We get to go see Hawai’i!’” “I was stoked!” Mol’s brother, Hendrik, a University of Hawai’i alum, added. They’ve explored, drinking in not just the beach volleyball life but the lifestyle that comes with it. In the gap between Warsaw and Espinho, Portugal, they saw a good deal of Poland. After getting knocked out in Russia, they saw Jay Z and Beyonce. Between San Jose and Las Vegas, they’ve become honorary South Bay residents after checking Yosemite off the bucket list. It’s how they stay fresh, enthused, thrilled about this warp-speed lives their living. “I think that’s really important just to get our minds off of volleyball for a little,” Mol said. “There is so much volleyball and also, in our family, we talk volleyball all the time. It’s really good just to get some days off when we’re not playing. I think that’s really important to keep our minds fresh and not always think about volleyball.” While they give their minds a rest from volleyball, nearly everyone in volleyball is thinking about them. “This off-season,” Jake Gibb said, “there’s going to be a lot of Norwegian film going around.” You don’t have to look hard for it. They upload every match, along with highly entertaining vlogs of their travels, onto their YouTube channel, Beach Volley Vikings, for all the world to see. And that’s exactly the point: They want to grow the game. If they can put out information that will help others learn, that’s exactly what they’ll do. “Just watch some video of these guys,” Hendrik said. “It’s great learning from these guys. They’re great athletes, they have some of the best technique in the game. Check them out for sure.” Lord knows the rest of the world is. As for the Norwegians? They’re checking out the rest of the world.

Martins Plavins requested the mic from Aleksandrs Samoilovs. Had to set some matters straight. “I know,” Plavins said on Saturday night at p1440 San Jose, “that Edgars misses me.” He was joking – maybe, possibly, perhaps – but Sunday’s result, when the Latvians upended the world’s best in Norway’s Christian Sorum and Anders Mol in the finals, proved that there’s likely a bit of truth to the notion that Edgars Tocs, Plavins’ typical partner, may have been missing his defender. Plavins and Tocs, Latvia’s No. 2 team behind Samoilovs and the injured Janis Smedins, were one of the world’s most delightful surprises in the 2018 FIVB season. Entering the year, Tocs, a 29-year-old from Madona, had never eclipsed the five-figure threshold in prize money, with just three main draws to his name in all of 2017. Yet there they were, on podium after podium to begin the year – gold at The Hague in January, silver in Kish Island a month later. By the end of the year they had played in 13 events, nearly as many main draws as Tocs had played in his entire career. By season’s end, they were ranked fifth in the world, three spots behind Samoilovs and Smedins, and a country that is roughly the size of Nebraska in terms of population was suddenly home to two of the world’s beach volleyball powers. Not that Latvia is an upstart. Not by any means. Ten years ago, Samoilovs and Plavins authored arguably the greatest upset in Olympic beach volleyball history when they stunned Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers in the first round of pool play. In 2012, Plavins did it again, this time with Smedins, upsetting Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal – then the No. 1 team in the world – in the quarterfinals of the 2012 Olympics in London. “We used to play good together,” Samoilovs said. “[Martins] agreed to come to San Jose so I’m very happy he had a chance to join me.” In two years, for the second time in three Olympics, they might very well join each other as teammates on separate teams. While Plavins was winning a bronze medal with Smedins in 2012, Samoilovs took a ninth with Ruslans Sorokins. “Martins is one of the best defenders in the world,” Samoilovs said, which explained why, in San Jose, Samoilovs, typically a split-blocker, stayed at the net. “It doesn’t make sense to go block.” Indeed it seemed they found the right defensive system, as they lost just one set the entire weekend in San Jose, to Austrian Olympian Alexander Huber and Leo Williams in the first round. After that, it was dominant win after dominant win, over Piotr Marciniak and Canadian Olympian Chaim Schalk, Spaniards Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera, Americans Miles Evans and Billy Kolinske and the world’s best in Noway’s Mol and Sorum. More important for either than the winning, though, is the fact they have a chance to win anything at all. Samoilovs remembers what it was like post-2016, when the world tour had just eight events big enough for the best to play, when beach volleyball was somewhat of a wasteland. With the advent of the King of the Court series and p1440, as well as the extension of the FIVB season, the sport has become nearly year-round. “This is really great,” Samoilovs said. “I remember after the Rio Olympics, in 2017, it was a disaster. It was only eight World Tour events, so you spend three months preparation just to play eight weeks, two months, so for us players we’re relieved because of these tournaments. Our families live because of these tournaments. It’s important to have more opportunities and more tournaments to earn money and to have a better life.”  

More stuff but with our boy Jake Gibbs. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/tuesdays-with-the-boys/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tuesdays-with-the-boys/support

There are exactly two indicators in Jake Gibb’s house that there is a professional volleyball living there. One is a panorama of the 1976 Manhattan Beach Open, the year Gibb was born. The other is a panorama of the 2005 Manhattan Beach Open, the first of three occasions in which Gibb would win and cement his name onto the famed Manhattan Pier. “It’s just kind of cool to see what it was when I was born, and you see the crowd just lined up like 30 deep watching, I think it was [Steve] Obradovich and I forget who he was playing with,” Gibb said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Then I have my first win, we played actually Nick and Phil, and I played with Stein [Metzger], and it’s a picture that Stein gave me after.” After that? Nothing. Nothing from the guy who has been to three Olympics and once, in 2012, finished ranked No. 1 in the world alongside Sean Rosenthal.   “Those,” he said of the Manhattan panoramas, “are the only volleyball pictures I have.” It really shouldn’t be all too surprising coming from Gibb, who has for years been one of beach volleyball’s most humble ambassadors. It’s not uncommon that his fellow AVP veterans liken him to Tim Duncan, the soon-to-be Hall-of-Famer after a brilliant career with the San Antonio Spurs. It’s easy to see the comparison, for the most notable characteristic the two share – aside from being excruciatingly modest, rarely succumb to any theatrics, unanimously respected by their peers – is this: They just get the job done. Since the AVP began hosting full seasons again in Donald Sun’s second year of ownership, in 2013, Gibb has won 16 AVP tournaments and competed in five more finals. He has won in Salt Lake City and Cincinnati, in Shanghai and New York, St. Pete’s and Atlantic City. He has won in the torrential rain, as he did in New Orleans of 2015, and stifling heat (Manhattan Beach, 2016). And, age be damned, at 42 years young, he’s doing it as well as he ever has. In four events this season, his second with Taylor Crabb, Gibb has made at least the semifinals in all four and thrice competed in the finals, beating Dalhausser and Nick Lucena in Seattle. “I feel like age really isn’t in the equation for me,” he said. “It’s how I’m playing and how I feel and my desire to play and I love playing and I feel like I’m playing well and I feel like I can keep increasing my knowledge of this sport so I want to keep doing it.” At the moment, it seems he’ll be doing it for another several years longer. Throughout the year, he and Crabb have only improved, finishing their last three FIVB events in the top 10. They claimed a fourth in a major in Gstaad, losing a thriller against current world leaders Anders Mol and Christian Sorum that would have pushed them into the finals. Two weeks later, at a major in Vienna, they came out of the qualifier to take fifth. Two weeks after that? Manhattan Beach, Gibb’s favorite stop. Again, he was in the finals, and had it not been for a swing that went two inches too long at the score freeze in the second set, he’d have had his fourth plaque on the Manhattan Beach Pier with his fourth partner. “It’s raw right now is where it is,” he said. “I’m going to need some time to let it sit. Like anything, you need time to learn from it, because right now I’m not in that space. Right now, it’s a car ride home by myself with a lot of F bombs and grabbing the wheel.” There’s not much time for reflection. Two days after Manhattan, Gibb began coaching duties for his son’s soccer team. Then a NORCECA qualifier on the day after that, one that begins the Olympic qualification process. Then it’s onto Chicago, the Netherlands, Hawaii, Vegas, maybe China, he isn’t sure yet. What he is sure of is this: He wants to go to Tokyo. And he isn’t ready to retire just yet.

Interviews with Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Inductees:Baseball's Jake Gibbs (new material)Baseball's Robert Braddy, Sr. (repeat) http://www.mpbonline.org/blogs/mpbs-season-pass/2018/01/25/mpbs-season-pass-baseball/Olympian Ralph Boston (repeat) http://www.mpbonline.org/blogs/mpbs-season-pass/2018/01/18/mpbs-season-pass-buckets-bowie-boston/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There stood Taylor Crabb, arms raised, trophy in hand, smiling for cameras. A familiar pose that’s becoming quite regular for Crabb. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the left side or the right, with Jake Gibb or Tim Bomgren or Chase Budinger – Crabb can and will win with whomever he’s sharing the court, wherever the court may be. Outrigger Canoe Club? He can win there, as he did on myriad occasions, with myriad partners, as a youth. New York City? Yeah, he can win there too, alongside Gibb. It’s the site of his first AVP victory, and could very well be the site of his third by the end of this weekend. Austin? He can push it to the finals there as well. Despite Gibb being injured. Despite only one day of practice with Tim Bomgren. Despite Bomgren playing on a sprained ankle that by the following Monday morning it would resemble a purple and blue softball more than it did an ankle. Laguna Beach? In a tournament he never intended on playing? With a partner, Budinger, he’d never played with? Not even a practice? On a side he hadn’t played in more than a year? He’ll take that $4,000 winner’s check, thank you very much. This is what Crabb does. Not necessarily the winning, though he does that plenty. He just plays. He plays everything. Always has. Likely always will. Nothing at the moment seems to indicate otherwise, anyway. “I’m pretty good at listening to my body,” he said, before admitting that “I do have injuries, but I do try to stay on top of them, one being my shoulder. A lot of rehab for my shoulder. Just keeping it strong helps a ton. “Honestly, I’m sure you know, this is only my third year on the beach so far. Your first three years coming from indoor – the sand felt so good. Your body is way better. Right now, that’s where I am: 26, off the hard court, feeling good, diving around in the sand, nothing is going to hurt me.” He’s feeling so good, in fact, that his coaches – Rich Lambourne and Tyler Hildebrand – have to order him not to practice. And even then, he still hops in for a drill or two, because there’s a new defensive position to learn, more reps to get, more playing to do. He’s done this his whole life. Doesn’t matter if it’s an impromptu dunk contest on the outdoor hoops across the street as a kid. Or basketball. Or soccer. Or living room volleyball. Or local tournaments that he’d win as a teen, “and I think everybody hated us,” he said, laughing. “All these 14, 15, 16-year-old kids winning all the tournaments.”   But when you look at those kids now, it’s easy to understand why most victories went their way. There’s Trevor Crabb, winner of two FIVBs this year, and Tri Bourne, once ranked No. 2 in the world in 2016. There’s Spencer McLaughlin and Brad Lawson, two of the top-rated recruits from their respective high school classes. There is the Beard Brothers before they became the Beard Brothers. There is Micah Christensen, who is arguably the best setter in the world, and the Shoji brothers, Erik and Kawika, Olympians both. And Taylor. Once the runt of the litter, so small that his aunt called him “Bug,” Taylor has since established himself as perhaps the best of the bunch, discussed among the top beach defenders in the country despite only being in his third year playing beach volleyball professionally. He whiffed in New Orleans of 2015, qualified for the next two – and then took a third in Manhattan Beach with Trevor. Since then? He’s been in six finals and another six semifinals, with wins in New York and Hermosa Beach.   “I have goals in life,” he said. “And not one of those goal is to be better than someone. The short-term goal is to defend my title in New York. That’s No. 1 right now.”

The mailbag is back!  On the second SANDCAST mailbag, Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, alongside Podcast Mama Gabby Bourne, answer a wide variety of questions from you, the listeners. Before we get into the questions, a way to reach out to SANDCAST. If you have any questions, feedback, tips or suggestions, email us at sandcastpodcast@gmail.com.  Thanks to all who sent in questions for this week! We answer one of the most oft-wondered questions in American beach volleyball: Aside from Phil Dalhausser, who has been the best American male in the past decade? Jake Gibb? Sean Rosenthal? John Hyden? Nick Lucena.  - The AVP has stopped at Madison Square Garden and played in front of a sold out crowd. If you had to pick one venue or site to play a tournament, where would it be? Both hosts, shockingly enough, may have biased answers based on hometowns and rooting interests.  - The United States, when compared to countries like Brazil, Poland, and Norway, among a number of others, is woefully behind in the development of young male talent. What's being done to produce higher-level talent at a younger age for the men?  - Finally, beach volleyball is slow to the game in terms of statistical and tangible analysis and breakdowns. Is that a direction the game is going, and if so, how?  If you like us, let us know and subscribe give a review on iTunes! Follow us on Podbean to catch up with all episodes! If you’re digging what we’re wearing, go ahead and give our sponsors some love at Plastic Clothing! If you’re looking for some new board shorts or bikinis, check out Rox and their 80 PERCENT OFF SALE! Popular on SANDCAST:SANDCAST 20: Brotherly love with Maddison McKibbinSANDCAST 17: Is p1440 the next big thing in beach volleyball?SANDCAST 13: Sara Hughes embraces new responsibility: Role modelSANDCAST 12: Talking’ sh** with Trevor CrabbSANDCAST No. 9: Chase Frishman and the AVP’s next wave of talentSANDCAST 8: Phil Dalhausser has another mountain to climbSANDCAST 6: A glimpse into greatness with April Ross, Part 2SANDCAST 5: A glimpse into greatness with April Ross, Part 1SANDCAST 3: It’s finally (finally) video game season for Kelly ClaesSANDCAST 1: The new Tri Bourne: Buddha Tri Bourne Recover the right way with Firefly: Accelerated Athletic Recovery Choose the ball the pros use. Choose Wilson, and use our 20 PERCENT DISCOUNT CODE: WILSONSAND!

Retired agent Kevin Rust served 29 years with the FBI. He spent the majority of his career in Mississippi in resident agencies out of the Jackson Division, including 13 years in a one person office. In this episode of FBI Retired case File Review, Kevin Rust reviews his investigation of a rural police officer charged and convicted of deprivation of rights under color of law violations, in connection with the blackjack beating of a Jake Gibbs, an elderly black man held in police custody. Gibbs sustained two broken ribs as the result of the use of excessive force incident. During his Bureau career, Kevin Rust also had assignments in Chicago, Budapest, FBI Headquarters and Quantico. He was a crisis negotiator who responded to many incidents both domestically and internationally and taught negotiation concepts to hundreds of state, local and international officers. Kevin Rust, who prior to entering the FBI was a CPA with Price Waterhouse, currently works as a contractor for the FBI’s International Corruption Unit tracing money flows and identifying for seizure assets that were purchased with money stolen by foreign kleptocrats. Join my Reader Team to get the FBI Reading Resource - Books about the FBI, written by FBI agents, the 20 clichés about the FBI Reality Checklist, and keep up to date on the FBI in books, TV, and movies via my monthly email. Join here.   Jerri Williams, a retired FBI agent, author and podcaster, attempts to relive her glory days by writing and blogging about the FBI and hosting FBI Retired Case File Review, a true crime/history podcast. Visit her website to check out her books, available as audiobooks, ebooks and paperbacks wherever books are sold. 

One day. That’s it. That’s all Tim Bomgren and Taylor Crabb had for practice prior to AVP Austin. Crabb needed an emergency fill-in after Jake Gibb broke his toe. To the lefty from Minnesota he turned, despite never having played with Bomgren before, despite never having played with a lefty before. Not that any of this is unusual for Bomgren. He lives in Minnesota yet is one of the best blockers in the country. While many in Southern California are training four or five days a week in April, sometimes using sand socks because it’s too hot, Bomgren is shoveling snow, sometimes using sand socks because it’s too cold. The only other time Bomgren had made an AVP semifinal was in New Orleans of 2015, in which he and his brother, Brian, practiced for maybe two weeks prior. One day? Sounds about right. “We talked about blocking calls and all that, we talked about who’s taking middle, who’s making the call when someone’s serving,” Bomgren said. “Taylor and Jake run a push to the outside – high, middle, low. Most teams do the same thing and I do the same thing with Brian. We talked about what his calls are, what my calls are and where to err. “I prefer the ball to be further inside than outside and Taylor’s the same way. Talking those things out makes a huge difference in how the game flows.” Indeed. Whatever adjustments Bomgren and Crabb made, they worked. In a 16-team draw that featured a fully-loaded field, in which the only absent American was the one for whom Bomgren filled in, they made the finals. Every team on their road to the finals had made at least the semifinals in the past year. “It was extremely difficult,” Bomgren said. “I personally had to take myself out of the play, just kind of take it step by step, and I’m not trying to look at ‘I need to win three more matches today.’ It’s ‘I need to pass this ball, where it needs to be, so Taylor can set me.’ It was breaking it down for me, when we’re serving and receiving, taking it step by step and doing what you can, seeing how the plays turn out.” Most turned out quite well. Some didn’t. They lost their second match, against Ryan Doherty and Billy Allen, a match in which Bomgren sprained his ankle, though he made sure to note on SANDCAST that the sprain was not the reason they lost. Allen and Doherty played better. That was it. “In the first game, we controlled the match, we controlled our side of the net, and what happened was game two and game three we had a slow start, and that was largely due to what we did on our side of the net,” Bomgren said. “They were things we can control. So we tried to refocus that, and credit to Billy and Ryan, they played phenomenal volleyball. They ended up controlling the last two games and, ultimately, the match. “We tried to refocus and we kept things simple on our side. Control our side of the net, do what we can do, and not do too much.” And in not doing too much, ironically, Bomgren, on a bum ankle, with a partner he had never played with, after just a week or so of touching a ball, in heat that is entirely foreign to his native Minnesota, did more than he ever has on the AVP Tour. He and Crabb won their next four matches, including the always-alluring Crabb on Crabb quarterfinal matchup, including a three-set, nearly two-hour grinder in a rain-soaked semifinal against Reid Priddy and Jeremy Casebeer. Just Tim being Tim. “I think I played once and had four drilling sessions,” he said of his preparation, laughing. “Brian and I are both the type of players, and we’re very gracious for it, but we’re not the type of players who need 1,000 reps a day to stay fresh and stay on top of our game. We kind of pick it up as we go. “Ultimately, what it comes down to, you get into that game situation, especially on the AVP Tour, and it doesn’t matter.  If you’re focused, you know what you’ve been practicing, you know what you’ve been doing. Once I’m focused, and I’m into the game, I’ve done it 1,000 times. Once you get into that game mindset, everything comes back to you.” All the way from Minnesota to the finals.

Special Olympics MS - Sam Wellls http://specialolympicsms.org/ 601-856-77482018 Special Olympics Mississippi Summer Games May 11-13, 2018 at Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi MS sgvolunteers@specialolympicsms.org MS Sports Hall of Fame member Jake Gibbs http://msfame.com/hall-of-fame/inductees/jake-gibbs/State Games of MS - Krilecia Glanakos https://www.stategamesofms.org/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fifth place? Had you told Theo Brunner, prior to the Fort Lauderdale Major this past weekend, that he'd take fifth place, in a field featuring every top beach volleyball team in the world, after being limited in training, admittedly a bit out of shape, with a new partner, after re-injuring his bad ankle and spraining his other... yeah, he'd have taken that. He was, as he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, just happy to play at all. At the end of last season, Brunner had sprained his ankle, an injury that has limited his training “70 or 80 percent” this off-season, he said. Add into that the fact that he was playing with a new partner in John Hyden, and add onto that the fact that he mildly reinjured that same ankle a few weeks ago, and onto that another sprain of the opposite ankle his first day of training in Fort Lauderdale and fifth isn't too shabby. “This was just ridiculous,” he said. “I feel so out of shape…I'm normally pretty on top of my conditioning, probably do too much in the off-season as far as running all the time before practice, on the gym, in the sand, and I couldn't do that this year. There were times when I was just struggling to catch my breath and I was like ‘Dude you're probably not going to win this set. Just collect yourself, get a little bit going.' “It's just hot and humid out there, and if you're gas to the floor the entire match, even if you're in really good shape, it's not going to be the best result for you. I was just trying to conserve, and when things were getting out of hand, I'm not jumping max and trying to slam this ball, I'm trying to conserve so I can get up on my block and side out consistently the next game.” Brunner admitted that perhaps that's not the best spot to be in, though here's the thing: It worked. Four of his five matches went to three sets, and Brunner and Hyden came out on top in three of them. They beat Austrians Martin Ermacora and Moritz Pristauz-Telsnigg 15-8 in the third set in a do-or-die match in the modified pool play format, eliminated Canadians Ben Saxton and Grant O'Gorman 15-11 in the first round of playoffs, survived, 18-16, over Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb to get to the quarterfinals before succumbing, 13-15, in the third to Brazilians Pedro Solberg and George Wanderley in a match that Brunner knows he should have won. The Americans were up, 13-10, before giving up five straight. “I've been reliving it the last 24 hours,” he said. “I went back and watched the video and they made a couple good plays… but I had a mindset ‘Alright, it's a little windy, the sets are blowing off the net, I'm just going to hit a good shot, make them work for it.' I think I should have just been a little more terminal… I think I tried to be a little too cute.” Next up for Brunner and Hyden, as it is for the majority of the Americans, is Doha from March 6-10, then Xiamen in mid-April before a four-star in Huntington Beach the first week of May. “Notwithstanding how we went out,” he said. “It was a good result for us.”

April is when the full-time volleyball begins. But the real battle annually begins in late January and early February, when Canadians Sam Schachter and Sam Pedlow stop by Hermosa Beach for a few weeks of high level training prior to FIVB Fort Lauderdale, the first major international event every year. The real battles, of course, do not take place on the courts themselves. Nah, they're on Instagram, where Pedlow has curated one of the best social media accounts across all of sports, right up there, it's easy to argue, with Joel Embiid, the troll savant of the NBA. He'll post highlights and bloopers, funny sound bytes and inspirational quotes, a little bit of everything. What makes it fun is that for the few weeks the Canadians are in town, the U.S. players they practice with – namely Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb, Casey Patterson and Stafford Slick, Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena in Florida prior to Fort Lauderdale – fire it right back in a friendly, if not still competitive, manner. “It's a self-proclaimed rivalry by Casey and Slick,” Schachter said, laughing. “In Canada, beach volleyball isn't as publicized as it is in the States,” Pedlow, the more active of the two, added. “They do a great job of making everybody know who you are. If we want people to know who we are we need to do some work, do some ground work. Every time we come down to the United States and play with these guys and post some videos it's good for us, because now we might get some Sam Times Two fans.” Patterson did his part in making sure his followers knew the Sams plays were fake (they're not), while his are real (they are). “People think we're kinda going at each other but it's all in good fun,” Pedlow said. “Now, I don't post a whole lot of rallies we don't win.” If you follow them closely enough, you'll know that isn't true. Pedlow and Schachter both enjoy a good blooper as much as the rest of us. But here's the thing: The rallies they lose are becoming exceedingly harder to come by. Last year, 2017, marked their first as a team, Schachter having needed a replacement for the since-retired Josh Binstock, and Pedlow in potential need of an upgrade from Grant O'Gorman (perfectly enough, the Sams are in the same pool as countrymen O'Gorman and Ben Saxton, former partner of transfer American Chaim Schalk). Their first tournament together was at this very same event a year ago, where they took ninth, having beaten O'Gorman and Michael Plantinga and Austrian Olympian Robin Seidl and Tobias Winter to break pool. Eventually, they were knocked out by Gibb and Crabb, though it was an auspicious start for what would become Pedlow's best season, one in which the Sams – or SamX2 or Sam Squared, whichever you prefer – would improve upon their seed in every single FIVB tournament they played in. Those finishes are thanks to what the two call “one and done volleyball,” a nod to their height and physicality. Pedlow, the 2017 Most Improved Player on the FIVB, stands 6-foot-5 and Schachter, the defender, 6-foot-6. They're the first to admit they won't dig as many balls as, say, a Crabb, who's light and nimble and quicksilver fast, but when they do, they're more likely to put it away, relying more on offensive and transition efficiency than long, dragged out rallies. They're ok with that. It works. Most importantly, for the fans and those following on social media: It's fun to watch.

It's a wonder how they're not brothers, John Mayer and Billy Allen. Similar demeanors – calm, collected, neither too high nor too low. Similar styles of play – crafty, ball-control-oriented, hyper-efficient. Similar hobbies – reading, coaching, dadding. Mayer thinks Allen has always been the better of the two. Allen thinks the same about Mayer. Any pandering to the crowd is done mostly in jest, Allen flexing after a float serve ace or a poke kill, though that's more than Mayer will generally do. He might offer the slightest of smiles. One of their chief similarities one might notice – and will inevitably notice if you listen to their podcast, Coach Your Brains Out – is the importance they place on mindset, emphasizing the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. “One thing I've learned is that we all have fixed mindsets and we don't even realize we have fixed mindsets,” Mayer says on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “It's really hard and the shift is never ending.” And neither, it's become evident, is their improvement. Mayer, after making just three career AVP finals in his first 11 years on Tour – it should be noted that he also made a pair of Corona Wide Open finals in 2011 – made four in 2015 alone, winning in New Orleans with Ryan Doherty. It culminated in him being named AVP MVP. Allen has seen a similar ascent. From 2004-2015, he failed to make a single AVP final, which set up a breakout pair of seasons in 2016 and '17, winning his first career AVP in Seattle in 2016 with Theo Brunner and following it up the next year with Stafford Slick. His win with Slick was sandwiched between a pair of finals appearances, the first in New York, where he fell to Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb, and then San Francisco, where an injury limited Slick. Allen and Mayer discuss their ascents, their shifts in mindsets and what their future looks like on SANDCAST.

It has become impossible to ignore: The top players in the United States are getting older. Nick Lucena is 38. John Hyden, ageless as he may be, is 45. Casey Patterson is 37, as is Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal. Jake Gibb is 41. “We're definitely holding it down for USA Volleyball,” Phil Dalhausser said last week on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. Holding it down until a new wave of talent establishes itself to fill in for the longtime veterans and representatives of the United States on the world stage. Chase Frishman is one of the most likely members of that next wave, and he considers himself to be, as he should. In just his second year on the AVP Tour, Frishman, partnered with Avery Drost, made his first semifinal, in Hermosa Beach, where, he admits on SANDCAST, “we got our bell rung.” By year's end, the 26-year-old nearly tripled the prize money from his Rookie of the Year campaign in 2016, taking five top-10 finishes in 2017 as compared to two in 2016. With Lucena, Hyden, Patterson and Rosenthal having, at most, one more quad left in them, Frishman sees himself as part of a group of four up-and-coming defenders under 30, including 25-year-old Taylor Crabb – “the golden boy,” Frishman says – 24-year-old Eric Zaun, and 28-year-old Miles Evans. He's not wrong. One aspect the three of them have in common is a Rookie of the Year Award, with Frishman succeeding Crabb and Zaun succeeding him. Evans has only played in one AVP main draw, choosing instead to compete internationally this past season with Billy Kolinske. But Frishman, of course, has one element those three – or anyone else on tour not named Sean Rosenthal, for that matter – do not have: Ledge's Legion. Aside from the infamous Rosie's Raiders, Frishman boasts the largest, loudest, rowdiest crowd on tour. They've bestowed themselves the nickname ‘Ledge's Legion' as an eponym of Frishman's nickname, ‘Ledge,' doled out because, as his former partner Mike Brunsting said, “When you watch him play, he just looks like a legend.”

The AVP Hermosa Open was everything beach volleyball fans could have asked for -- Cinderellas, mobbed stadiums, big draws, big upsets, a Crabb on Crabb matchup (twice!). Paper Courts interviews Gibb, who won with Taylor Crabb, and Trevor Crabb, the AVP's newest and much-needed villain. You can find all coverage of the Hermosa Open at Papercourts.com or these links in particular: Event preview: https://papercourts.com/2017/07/20/avp-hermosa-calling-all-ghosts-of-beach-volleyballs-past/ Qualifier recap: https://papercourts.com/2017/07/21/avp-hermosa-sometimes-you-must-simply-be-the-man-in-the-arena/ Tournament recap: https://papercourts.com/2017/07/24/avp-hermosa-trevor-crabb-and-the-emergence-of-the-villain-beach-volleyball-needed/

I made a bet with Ben Vaught, my de facto West Coast little brother, prior to the season. After every podcast I put up, he asked when he could be on it. So I told him, not thinking he would actually accomplish this until perhaps Manhattan, that he could be on the podcast when he qualified. Well, it took him one event to do so. Ben, also known as Uncle Ben or Benny Boo Boo or Crack Shack, rolled through the Huntington Beach qualifier, stunning four-time Olympian Reid Priddy and Canadian Olympian Chaim Schalk in the final round. He cried a little. Hell, I was damn near tears, too. So here is our conversation. We'll cover: - His experience qualifying on the AVP as a 20-year-old. - What it's like being in the players' tent for the first time. - The number of training opportunities it has since opened up. - Ben's progression through the years, and how he got so damn good so fast. - Beating Olympians - Playing Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb Enjoy, and welcome back to the Paper Courts Podcast!

He was there for beach volleyball's inaugural appearance in the Olympic Games -- and he came away with a silver medal. Mike Dodd, partnered with Mike Whitmarsh, cemented his legacy as one of beach volleyball's greats, though his legacy goes far beyond what he did on the court. He has since coached Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal in two more Olympic Games, and Dodd will discuss in depth his Olympic experiences as both a player and a coach.

Tyler Hildebrand has more accolades to his name than the much of the AVP Tour. No player in Long Beach State history has recorded more assists. He became a three-time All-American and went on to become a four-time gold medalist at the Pan-American Cup. After eight (8!) knee surgeries, he retired as a player and began coaching at his alma-mater and on the beach, where he helped Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb to a win at the Manhattan Beach Open and a berth at the 2016 Olympic Games.

BVB Hall of Famer Eric Fonoimoana talks career / HOF and the after VB life.  The new TNL Correspondents segment debuts with Brittany Hochevar and Jake Gibb.  That and more on a new TNL.

The Net Live crew welcomes Two-Time Olympian, Jake Gibb to the show along with Sara Butler from www.setitforward.com