Podcast appearances and mentions of maddison mckibbin

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features the McKibbin Bros – with a twist. Maddison McKibbin and the youngest Beard(less) Bro, Jameson McKibbin, makes his podcast debut. Together, the three McKibbin brothers have changed the game in terms of how beach volleyball is covered, creating content that had never been done in the sport, establishing a presence on the AVP Tour. In this episode, the boys chat about: The dynamics of the inaugural AVP League, focusing on the experiences of the McKibbin brothers and their journey in the sport. It delves into team dynamics, the evolution of player interactions, and the impact of fan engagement on the sport's growth. The discussion also highlights the challenges and insights gained from being part of the AVP League, including the introduction of new concepts like walk-ins and the importance of team chemistry. The evolving dynamics of volleyball, focusing on how players showcase their personalities, the balance between entertainment and competition, and the importance of fun in the sport. The first year of the AVP League, the significance of partnerships, and insights into female players' contributions to the game. The need for authenticity and creativity in sports, as well as the impact of fan engagement on player performance. SHOOTS! *** Use code SANDCAST for 10% off The Genomic Edge Program now through December 31st! https://root-and-fruit-nutrition.mykajabi.com/the-genomic-edge-program     WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Love the insights from this episode? Make sure you never miss a beat with Chatpods! Whether you're commuting, working out, or just on the go, Chatpods lets you capture and summarize key takeaways effortlessly. Save time, stay organized, and keep your thoughts at your fingertips. Download Chatpods directly from App Store or Google Play and use it to listen to this podcast today! https://www.chatpods.com/?fr=TravisMewhirter   Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST63. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Introducing Balltime, the AI platform making breaking down film and statistics EASY (FINALLY!). Use our link for a discount and give it a try! Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  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 of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Maddison McKibbin, one of the biggest – if not the biggest, alongside his brother, Riley McKibbin – trailblazers in the world of beach volleyball content. Together, the McKibbins founded and have grown the McKibbin Brothers YouTube Channel to more than 100,000 subscribers, developing one of the biggest, most loyal, followings of any beach volleyball team in the world. On this episode, we caught up with Maddison, chatting: The absurd growth in the past five years of the McKibbin brothers How Maddison and Riley flipped the narrative of ‘win first, develop content second' and scored big time because of it The climate and marketplace of beach volleyball What plans and ideas the McKibbins, now joined by younger brother Jameson McKibbin, have in store for the 2023 season And much, much more. Such a fun episode, as always, anytime we get a Beard Brother on to talk volley, content, business, and all other kinds of random stuff. 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 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  

Maddison McKibbin of the AVP joins Jeff to talk about his volleyball career. He discusses what playing in college was like and how he got his masters while dealing with injury, sharing some interesting and funny stories about playing overseas. He also discusses becoming pro with AVP and starting his own media and content channel with his brother.

Maddison McKibbin of the AVP joins Jeff to talk about his volleyball career. He discusses what playing in college was like and how he got his masters while dealing with injury, sharing some interesting and funny stories about playing overseas. He also discusses becoming pro with AVP and starting his own media and content channel with his brother.

We're not done yet.  Barnett and DJ Roueche are joined by one half of The McKibbon Brothers aka the bearded bros, Maddison McKibbon.  Maddison was kind enough to sit in the entire episode as we discussed the AVP Player Awards Banquet, the Olympic race, his YouTube channel and even a little Snow Volleyball. Rich Lambourne called in at the beginning of the show to help recap the AVP Awards Banquet.  Some thing we could talk about, others, not so much.  He also helped break down the points race heading in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Check out The McKibbin Brothers YouTube channel.  You won't be dissapoointed. Also, The Net Live can be heard on iTunes and Spotify. TheNetLiveShow.com        

Maddison McKibbin is my guest on today’s episode. It was great speaking with one half of the “Bearded Brothers” pro beach volleyball team. Maddison shared some stories about life as a professional volleyball player, indoors and beach. He also shared his snow volleyball stories as he talked about the possibility of the sport becoming a Winter Olympic game. We talked about life outside of volleyball and how players in professional sports need to diversify their talents and connections. The McKibbin brothers have successfully developed their audio/video company supporting the volleyball community and sharing the fun times with everyone. You can watch the McKibbin brothers play in the AVP beach tournaments in person or streaming on Amazon Prime. The volleyball community as a whole is welcoming to new fans and truly appreciates the support they receive. Maddison McKibbin was a three-time state champion at Punahou High in Honolulu for indoor volleyball. He was the MVP of both the 2009 Volleyball Magazine Fab 50 list as well as the Mizuno/Volleyball Magazine All-American Team. Maddison continued his indoor career as opposite/outside hitter at the University of Southern California. #avp #beachvolleyball #beach #hermosabeach #manhattanbeach #business #businesstravel #travel #youtube #usc #trojans #usctrojans #roadwarrior #travelfit #traveling #volleyball #volleyballplayer #volleyballislife #volleyballlife #volleyballgame #everki #podcast #entrepreneur #businesstrip #worktrip Intro song “Road Trip” by Robin Tricker

Maddison McKibbin is my guest on today’s episode. It was great speaking with one half of the “Bearded Brothers” pro beach volleyball team. Maddison shared some stories about life as a professional volleyball player, indoors and beach. He also shared his snow volleyball stories as he talked about the possibility of the sport becoming a Winter Olympic game.We talked about life outside of volleyball and how players in professional sports need to diversify their talents and connections. The McKibbin brothers have successfully developed their audio/video company supporting the volleyball community and sharing the fun times with everyone.You can watch the McKibbin brothers play in the AVP beach tournaments in person or streaming on Amazon Prime. The volleyball community as a whole is welcoming to new fans and truly appreciates the support they receive.Maddison McKibbin was a three-time state champion at Punahou High in Honolulu for indoor volleyball. He was the MVP of both the 2009 Volleyball Magazine Fab 50 list as well as the Mizuno/Volleyball Magazine All-American Team. Maddison continued his indoor career as opposite/outside hitter at the University of Southern California.#avp #beachvolleyball #beach #hermosabeach #manhattanbeach #business #businesstravel #travel #youtube #usc #trojans #usctrojans #roadwarrior #travelfit #traveling #volleyball #volleyballplayer #volleyballislife #volleyballlife #volleyballgame #everki #podcast #entrepreneur #businesstrip #worktrip

Maddison McKibbin is my guest on today’s episode. It was great speaking with one half of the “Bearded Brothers” pro beach volleyball team. Maddison shared some stories about life as a professional volleyball player, indoors and beach. He also shared his snow volleyball stories as he talked about the possibility of the sport becoming a Winter Olympic game.We talked about life outside of volleyball and how players in professional sports need to diversify their talents and connections. The McKibbin brothers have successfully developed their audio/video company supporting the volleyball community and sharing the fun times with everyone.You can watch the McKibbin brothers play in the AVP beach tournaments in person or streaming on Amazon Prime. The volleyball community as a whole is welcoming to new fans and truly appreciates the support they receive.Maddison McKibbin was a three-time state champion at Punahou High in Honolulu for indoor volleyball. He was the MVP of both the 2009 Volleyball Magazine Fab 50 list as well as the Mizuno/Volleyball Magazine All-American Team. Maddison continued his indoor career as opposite/outside hitter at the University of Southern California.#avp #beachvolleyball #beach #hermosabeach #manhattanbeach #business #businesstravel #travel #youtube #usc #trojans #usctrojans #roadwarrior #travelfit #traveling #volleyball #volleyballplayer #volleyballislife #volleyballlife #volleyballgame #everki #podcast #entrepreneur #businesstrip #worktrip

Maddison McKibbin is my guest on today’s 5 for Friday. A world class athlete and professional beach volleyball player, Maddison has learned what it takes to be the best. I really enjoyed my conversation with Maddison as we discussed his life as a professional beach volleyball player and video content creator with his brother Riley. Maddison talks about the differences in traveling for the AVP tour and the FIVB tour. As their video content creating gets better they have to remember to pack all of the additional recording gear when traveling to tournaments.Make sure to listen to the full episode on Monday.Maddison McKibbin was a three-time state champion at Punahou High in Honolulu for indoor volleyball. He was the MVP of both the 2009 Volleyball Magazine Fab 50 list as well as the Mizuno/Volleyball Magazine All-American Team. After graduating high school, Maddison continued his indoor career as opposite/outside hitter at the University of Southern California.

Maddison McKibbin is my guest on today’s 5 for Friday. A world class athlete and professional beach volleyball player, Maddison has learned what it takes to be the best. I really enjoyed my conversation with Maddison as we discussed his life as a professional beach volleyball player and video content creator with his brother Riley. Maddison talks about the differences in traveling for the AVP tour and the FIVB tour. As their video content creating gets better they have to remember to pack all of the additional recording gear when traveling to tournaments.Make sure to listen to the full episode on Monday.Maddison McKibbin was a three-time state champion at Punahou High in Honolulu for indoor volleyball. He was the MVP of both the 2009 Volleyball Magazine Fab 50 list as well as the Mizuno/Volleyball Magazine All-American Team. After graduating high school, Maddison continued his indoor career as opposite/outside hitter at the University of Southern California.

Maddison McKibbin is my guest on today’s 5 for Friday. A world class athlete and professional beach volleyball player, Maddison has learned what it takes to be the best. I really enjoyed my conversation with Maddison as we discussed his life as a professional beach volleyball player and video content creator with his brother Riley. Maddison talks about the differences in traveling for the AVP tour and the FIVB tour. As their video content creating gets better they have to remember to pack all of the additional recording gear when traveling to tournaments. Make sure to listen to the full episode on Monday. Maddison McKibbin was a three-time state champion at Punahou High in Honolulu for indoor volleyball. He was the MVP of both the 2009 Volleyball Magazine Fab 50 list as well as the Mizuno/Volleyball Magazine All-American Team. After graduating high school, Maddison continued his indoor career as opposite/outside hitter at the University of Southern California. #avp #beachvolleyball #beach #hermosabeach #manhattanbeach #business #businesstravel #travel #youtube #usc #trojans #usctrojans #roadwarrior #travelfit #traveling #volleyball #volleyballplayer #volleyballislife #volleyballlife #volleyballgame #everki #podcast #entrepreneur #businesstrip #worktrip

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.”  

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.

The McKibbins are not all that different from any other set of siblings, if not a touch more hirsute and athletically inclined. They fight. They argue. They point out one another's flaws, sometimes a bit gleefully. And they do this often. Often enough for Riley McKibbin to film a video blog detailing the frustrations of volleyball, and playing volleyball with your brother, and how to deal with these frustrations. “I think we would both agree that we have a hard time listening to each other,” Maddison McKibbin said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Just because you're brothers, if you hear one word of critique, you go straight back to the last thing he messed up on, and you're thinking ‘Dude don't talk to me when you're doing this.' You revert to it and it's so bad. I would never treat anyone else like that. “It's this battle of trying to take suggestions and criticisms and critiques constructively and I know that sounds very basic but it's hard when it's your brother.” Their relationship is at once their biggest strength and vulnerability. On a tip from defender Geena Urango, a fellow USC Trojan, the McKibbins now pick out three aspects or skills each of them want to work on in practice, which has both improved their volleyball and reduced the resistance to critiques from a sibling. “If we mess up on something else, it's ‘I'm not going to get mad at you, you're not going to get mad at me, we're just working on these three things,'” Maddison said. “And then enforcing at the end of practice one thing that went well and one thing that we're working on. The idea is to cut down on the frustration and whatever you want to call it between you and your partner, because when you have a plan, you can call someone out if you really want to, like ‘Hey, Riley, you suck at number two.'” It's why this past season was so different for Maddison, who hadn't played with anyone aside from Riley since 2011. When Riley hurt his hand in the season-opening event in Huntington Beach, Maddison was forced to explore partner options, to play with someone he didn't share a childhood with, didn't share the USC court with, didn't travel throughout Europe with, didn't grind through the qualifiers with. What he found was this: Finding, and keeping, partners, is tough. Meshing with new partners is tough. Playing without your brother is kinda weird. He played Austin and New York with Reid Priddy, and in the subsequent shuffle prior to Seattle, he wound up with Ty Loomis. And after getting swept out of Seattle, they stunned no small number of people in winning San Francisco just two weeks later. Most would have thought Maddison and Loomis would stick together. A no-brainer. They were champs! Then again, most don't understand the bond between the Beard Brothers. “When I played with Reid I told him ‘When Riley's coming back, I'm playing with Riley' and it was the same thing I told to Ty,” Maddison said. “And Ty wanted to keep going and I completely understand. But to me, I'm an incredibly loyal person, and I love the game of beach volleyball, but we both know that, financially, it's hard to sustain, and playing with my brother, I love playing with my brother. “When we win, it's that much better, and when we lose, it sucks. In order to make this lifestyle sustainable, we have to create content, we have to develop a brand within the sport, and I'm not saying I'm only playing with him because of our brand, but when you win with someone who's had your back for that long, or has encouraged you to pursue so many different things, that in itself is enough to say that ‘I know I had success with this one person but I'd much rather win with you.' So my goal is: ‘I want to win with you. I want to be these idiotic beard brothers on the AVP. That's where I want to be in life.”

Maddison McKibbin was finished. Finished with volleyball. Finished with being overseas. Finished with not being paid. Finished with the shady ownership of international volleyball teams. Finished with it all. He had played the game long enough, beginning at Hawaii's famed Outrigger Canoe Club then onto Punahou School, where he became a three-time state champ, which preceded four years at USC, where he made a pair of Final Four appearances. And now there he was, in Greece, looking at his bed, where a random Brazilian man was laying, fast asleep. Evidently, the owner of McKibbin's team had signed a new outside hitter. He didn't tell McKibbin, though apparently he did give the new Brazilian outside the keys to the apartment. That was it. McKibbin was out. He was going home. Was going to finish his Master's Degree. Was getting out of volleyball.  Time for something else.  Riley McKibbin, Maddison's older brother of two years, had other plans. He was going to play in Italy. Would Maddison want to come, just to kick it for three months, drink some wine and hang out in Italy? For that, sure, he could delay grad school for a few months to hang in Italy. So long as he wasn't playing volleyball, he was in. And then Riley had another idea. “What if we give beach a try?” They had the talent. There was no questioning that. They had been raised in uber-competitive Hawaii, alongside Taylor and Trevor Crabb, Spencer McLaughlin, Brad Lawson, Tri Bourne, competing occasionally against AVP legends Stein Metzger and Kevin Wong and Mike Lambert. Both of the McKibbins had played in FIVB Youth tournaments, and they proved they were good enough indoors to compete and make a living at a professional level. The transition from indoor to beach sounds simple enough. It's a similar game with similar skillsets, where the underlying principle is the same: pass, set, hit. It, of course, was not. They weren't entirely sure what the state of their beach skills was, so they bought a handful of AVP volleyballs from Costco and exiled themselves to a court in Venice Beach, a few zip codes away from any serious players. And so there it was that you could find two professional volleyball players, practicing in Venice Beach, legitimately mortified that someone might see them dusting off the rust of a game they hadn't played for the better part of a decade. “We couldn't even hit it over the net,” Riley said in an earlier interview. “The transition from indoor to the beach is so hard. We're both indoor players, and making that switch is a lot harder than people think.” Unless, of course, you're the McKibbins. In the first qualifier they entered, not long after scraping the rust off their beach games, in New York City in 2015, they qualified. And thus the Beard Bros were born. Their relationship is both like that of any other siblings – fighting and squabbling wrapped in brotherly love – and yet it is also nothing like that of any other siblings. The McKibbins are partners in everything they do. They're roommates. They're business partners. They're AVP partners. They shoot the wildly popular McKibbin Volleyball videos together. They vlog together. They play together. Even when Maddison won AVP San Francisco while Riley sat out with an injury, even when he was fielding calls from Reid Priddy, even when he had no shortage of partner options, there was never any question whom he would be playing with: Riley McKibbin. “Riley,” he said on SANDCAST, “is the reason I'm playing volleyball right now.” And so it is that Maddison, so long as Riley is healthy, will not play with another who's last name is not McKibbin. They're a package deal. Whether they're vlogging about the frustrations of volleyball, filming a tutorial from Kelly Reeves on the nuances of bumpsetting, or practicing against Sean Rosenthal and Chase Budinger, they're going to do it together.  The only thing, for now, that it seems isn't on their agenda?  Shaving.   

If you didn't get to the Hermosa Beach Pier early on July 22, you would have been too late. There would have been no seats left, nowhere for you to watch the first clash of the Crabbs, Taylor and Trevor, brothers and former partners turned, it seemed, bitter rivals. This wasn't even the final – that would be a day later. This was the quarters, an oft-ignored round, one normally you'd sit and watch should you be there but not one to schedule your day around. And, yet, of course, this was no ordinary quarterfinal. This was a can't miss match, on a Saturday. The reason can be effectively summarized in two words: Trevor Crabb.   *** You may not like Trevor. You may love him. There's a better chance you're in one camp or the other, and not in the gray area in between, which is as much a societal trend as it is one regarding the elder of the Crabb brothers. He likes that it's quite possible he's in a similar – relatively speaking – popularity category as Tom Brady and LeBron James, who are, paradoxically, both the most liked and disliked players in their respective leagues. He digs how much attention his verbal digs get – sand-throwing fools and goggle-wearing fools and a hungover fool. His mouth has earned him almost daily jabs on social media from Ty Loomis (the sand throwing fool) and the on-court animosity of his brother, Taylor (the hungover fool), who reserves stare downs across the net almost exclusively for Trevor. Maddison McKibbin was at his most vocal when he and Loomis played Trevor and Sean Rosenthal in Hermosa Beach on July 21. It wasn't much of a match, with Crabb and Rosenthal winning 21-16, 21-13, and yet the interest in it never waned, so close were the possibilities for explosions. Thanks, in large part, to the fuses that Crabb had lit.  He did not invent trash talk on the beach. But Crabb has done what we can to revive it in what has been a largely amicable half-decade for the AVP under Donald Sun.   He still laughs at the attention it gets, because when you think about it, what, in the wide scheme of sporting trash talk, has Trevor Crabb really done? He called Loomis a sand-throwing fool, though Loomis is the first to take immense pride in his quirky celebrations, in which he is, indeed, making himself as sandy as possible, either by showering himself with it or rolling in it. Crabb called Slick a goggle-wearing fool, and indeed, Slick does wear military-grade goggles to shield his eyes. Taylor Crabb's hard-partying ways are hardly breaking news. All three give it right back, too. Most of this is good-natured. Some of it flirts with the line of needling and perhaps a bit too far. He's not altogether concerned either way. “That's what makes it fun,” Crabb said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. His most notorious rub is with Reid Priddy, a four-time indoor Olympian who, in his first year full-time on the beach, made the semifinals of the Manhattan Beach Open, where he met Crabb and Rosenthal. Crabb blocked Priddy early, and by Crabb's accounting of the event, he waved for the crowd – and particularly to Rosie's Raiders – to grow louder. Priddy, according to Crabb, told him to try to block the next one with his eyes open. Crabb says he told Priddy to go back to indoor. Some have said Crabb went further, that he made things personal. On SANDCAST, Crabb shrugged it off and said that was basically that. Either way, when the match ended, there was an icy standoff between the two. The beach volleyball world subsequently lost its collective mind, and had you been following it purely on social media, you might have thought they brawled instead of played. They simply walked opposite directions. It's a wonder what the reaction would have been to a player like, say, Kent Steffes, or Tim Hovland or Steve Obradovich, some of the sharpest, brashest trash talkers the game has known, bastions of a bygone era. In 1992, three years after Crabb was born, Steffes, who remains one of the most well-known American beach volleyball players, told the Los Angeles Times that "I'd been taught aggressive, loud-mouthed, obnoxious volleyball. You try to humiliate the other team because they're trying to humiliate you. I didn't go out to win, I went out to destroy." And, much to the delight of beach volleyball fans – and there were tens of thousands of them back then – that in your face style made for some provocative matches, on the court and off. Later that year, Steffes had Randy Stoklos running so hot that Stoklos followed him to his hotel after a match and they nearly came to blows. Steffes told the New York Times the next day that "you know why Randy and I got in that fight? Because I blocked him at 13-all to break open the game, 14-13. And I went, 'Yeahhhh.' And I turned around and high-fived Karch. And he thought I shouldn't cheer when I blocked him, that he'd been involved in the sport for so long, he'd played for 10 years, that I ought to respect him enough not to cheer when I block him. Have you ever heard anything so asinine in your life?" Sound familiar? In 1996, when Steffes was informed that Stoklos had twisted his ankle and wouldn't be anywhere close to 100 percent for their Olympic trial match the next day, the one to qualify for Atlanta, he shrugged and deadpanned: “Good. I hope it's broken.” That was volleyball then – loud, merciless, unapologetic.   “Anything goes,” Sinjin Smith told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “Yelling, screaming, fighting – and all of it happened. In any given match, it was pretty crazy. And very, very entertaining to the public. Players would end up going into the crowd and actually mixing it up with the crowd and each other. You just don't see that today." It wasn't only reserved for the bad boys. No, even Karch Kiraly, the G.O.A.T, the golden boy, one of the most likable humans there is, took swipes at Smith prior to the 1996 Olympic Games. He told the press that Smith, who was nearing 40, might need a wheelchair to be brought out on center court. He lashed out at – and has since apologized to – Carl Henkel, Smith's partner in the 1996 Olympics, too. “Every time Karch had a microphone he was badmouthing Sinjin,” Henkel told me last winter, during an interview for a beach volleyball book. Karch Kiraly? Bad mouthing? Are Crabb's antics all that different? Perhaps the beach volleyball world has become a bit sensitive. Crabb's volume of trash talk pales in comparison to the Golden State Warriors' Draymond Green, whose prodigious mouth earns him technical fouls and fines by the month. And besides, Crabb's never intentionally kicked someone in the nuts. It pales in comparison to the Redskins' Josh Norman, or former Viking great Randy Moss. Heck, even Jordan Spieth will mix it up on the PGA Tour. Perhaps you'd like Crabb to shut up. Just play volleyball. Maybe win a tournament before chiding those who have, like Taylor or Loomis or McKibbin or Slick. But you cannot deny this: When Trevor plays, you're going to watch. You're going to listen.