Travis Mewhirter's Blog, page 16

The rise, fall, and potential rise again of the National Volleyball League

The following, which details the founding of the National Volleyball League and its recent cancellation of the 2017 season is, for the most part, an excerpt from the manuscript of my upcoming book on beach...

The post The rise, fall, and potential rise again of the National Volleyball League appeared first on Paper Courts.

Q&A with NVL founder and CEO Albert Hannemann

On Thursday afternoon, the NVL announced that it has canceled the remainder of the 2017 season, just two weeks prior to its scheduled event in Hermosa Beach. On Friday morning, I was able to get...

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NVL cancels remainder of 2017 season

On Thursday afternoon, the NVL announced that it has canceled the remainder of the 2017 season, just two weeks prior to its scheduled event in Hermosa Beach. What a change of pace this is. Just...

The post NVL cancels remainder of 2017 season appeared first on Paper Courts.

AVP Hermosa: Jake Gibb, Trevor Crabb talk AVP Hermosa Beach Open

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...

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Beach volleyball: Jake Gibb, Trevor Crabb talk AVP Hermosa Beach Open

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. Listen in here!

Or you can check it out and subscribe on iTunes here.

You can find all coverage of the AVP Hermosa Open below:

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/

AVP Hermosa: Trevor Crabb and the emergence of the villain beach volleyball needed

Trevor Crabb was, to be honest, bored.

Bored of everybody being so nice. Bored of the amicable handshakes and hugs and good games. Bored of the good lucks and I hope you wins. Bored of players watching one another’s kids and having one another’s backs.

What happened to the AVP Tour?

What happened to the jawing, the shoving, going at each other’s throats? What happened to the South Bay vs. the North Bay? What happened to that 1996 Olympic quarterfinal, the one between Kiraly and Smith, the one that you couldn’t miss not so much because of the volleyball but because of the heated rivalry that came with it?

When did all that disappear, leaving in its wake arguably the most amicable association of professional athletes in the world?

Even golf – golf, for heaven’s sake – has a little fire.

Trevor Crabb took the kerosene this sport needed, brought it to the beach and lit that thing up.

It began on Instagram, the elder Crabb calling out a certain goggle-wearing fool and a voluble defender with a penchant for throwing sand.

The boredom stopped there.

Suddenly, Instagram became host to the AVP’s first civil war in, God, how long had it been? When was the last time there was a healthy dose of bad blood between players? When was the last time somebody had ripped down a net, got in someone’s face? When was the last time players had to be separated, when the fans, having chosen allegiances, would get nose to nose?

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“Maybe just the personalities of the guys on Tour are a little more quiet and sheltered,” Crabb said. “You had some of those crazy guys back in the day for sure.”

Crabb changed that. He fired some shots on Instagram, stirring the pot for an event that was already sure to be most attractive event of the season not named Manhattan. The response was better than he hoped for, particularly when he and Sean Rosenthal got the match they most wanted, a third-round clash with Ty Loomis and Maddison McKibbin, those sand-throwing fools Crabb so wanted to silence.

Loomis and McKibbin won San Francisco, and it marked Loomis’s first win since 2009 and Maddison’s first ever. They celebrated accordingly, and many of those celebrations inevitably wound up on social media.

“That was a team I especially wanted to beat, especially after they won San Fran,” Crabb said. “Ty was just going over the top on winning it. Me and Rosie were both pretty excited to play them and beat them down. We were talking the whole week, making fun of Loomis.”

And then they beat Loomis and McKibbin, 21-16, 21-13. A match with those scores doesn’t sound altogether intriguing, and yet that’s exactly what it was. Because there was Crabb, tomahawk-blocking McKibbin, giving a double-Mutombo finger wag. There was McKibbin, blasting past Crabb’s block, loudly wondering where he was at. There was Loomis after the match, eschewing a hand-shake, instead tossing a handful of sand at Crabb.

#NevorTrevor, right?

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Ah, yes. Trevor, the AVP’s newest, gleeful villain, has his own hashtag, spawned by Loomis, the sand-throwing fool.

That was just the prelude, the opening act.

We have all wanted what came next, Crabb vs. Crabb. A matchup of ex-partners or a matchup of siblings is always intriguing. A matchup of sibling ex-partners who might be the two most promising 20-something-year-old prospects in America whose relationship is notoriously rocky in the quarterfinals, after exchanging blows on social media, was ineluctable.

That’s why fans were being turned away at their quarterfinal matchup, and I think that sentence is worth repeating: Beach volleyball fans were being turned away at a quarterfinal matchup on a Saturday afternoon, because the stadium was too full.

“It was pretty unreal, it was like a final almost,” said Trevor, who has now made six finals in the last two years. “I was for sure really excited to finally play them, the first time all year.”

It was, by Trevor’s own admission, a sloppy match. Lots of errors, weird mistakes. It didn’t matter. The fans came to watch the volleyball, yes, but this was Taylor vs. Trevor, the “hungover fool” vs. the sober brother devoid of victory.

They wanted what came between points, the smack talk, Taylor extending his hand, only to be ignored, so he just high-fived himself.

It was wonderful theater.

And somehow lost amid all that was perhaps the second-greatest blocker in United States history vs. his ex-partner and maybe the most athletic human alive, the one with the nickname “Superman.”

This was the best quarterfinal the AVP could have asked for.

“It was fun,” Gibb said. “It was fun to be a part of. I could feel my partner’s energy coming into it, just heightened, and I could feel Trevor’s energy right off the back, trying to talk trash to me. He was giving me the ‘I want this!’ across the net and it was cool, it was like ‘This is what I play for.’ You got four guys that want it, doing everything they can, it was cool.”

And then it happened again, in the finals, with significantly higher stakes and appropriately accompanying trash talk.

Volleyball-wise, the match was twice that of the quarterfinal, going to three sets, Rosenthal making plays only Rosenthal, no matter what his age may be, can make, Gibb extending that mighty roof, Taylor bouncing, Trevor keeping the fire stoked and alive.

“It’s always tough to say it’s one of the best matches when you lose a match but I’ve been to six finals and it was probably the best final atmosphere, volleyball-wise, that I was a part of, and I lost all those other finals obviously, but this one was the best,” Trevor said. “Both teams played really well so just for volleyball and TV this was the best one.”

Trevor was speaking to the final, but he could have just as well have been speaking about the event as a whole.

Taylor and Gibb won, yes, but the sport of beach volleyball was the victor in the South Bay. It was a tournament that featured more than 150 teams between the two qualifiers, a main draw that included a pair of brothers, Marcus and Miles Partain, who are 17 and 15 years of age, respectively. It was a tournament where a blocker, Tim Bomgren, led the Tour in digs, and a new partnership, Chase Frishman and Avery Drost, logged their best finishes ever.

It was a tournament made for television, with mobs of crowds surrounding not just stadium court, but every single outlier as well. It was a tournament with new faces, desperately-needed new matchups, with a jump-bumping, chest-digging team – Rafu Rodriguez-Bertran and Piotr Marciniak – in one semifinal, and Captain America, Drost, in the other.

It was a tournament with the best possible final, and the best possible crowd, and the best possible Cinderellas, in the best possible setting, the aptly-named Hermosa Beach.

“That’s the heartland of beach volleyball,” Gibb said of Hermosa. “People love this sport, they live and breathe it. There was energy there that I haven’t seen in a lot of years. Even Manhattan Beach – Manhattan Beach has it’s own unique energy.

“But Hermosa has – I think there’s this sort of down to Earth, real volleyball fans. It’s cool. I had almost forgotten how good it was.”

I hope the AVP doesn’t forget. I hope it comes back, and comes back again, and again. No more seven-year droughts. Not after this weekend, not after it delivered everything a beach volleyball fan could have asked for and then some.

Not only did we have the return of the tradition-rich setting, we witnessed the emergence of a much-needed heel, a rebel with a cause, a personality that meshes perfectly with his own adopted fan-bases, Rosie’s Raiders.

“Someone’s gotta do it, otherwise it’s kinda boring,” Trevor said. “Other sports, you hear it all the time, it’s just part of the game. I don’t mind it at all and I know everyone enjoys it in some kind of way.”

AVP Hermosa: Sometimes, you must simply be the man in the beach volleyball arena

I had to appreciate the irony.

Even after I had shared a very long, cathartic moment with the Pacific Ocean, staring into everything, staring into nothing; even after I had missed far too many blocks and hit a loopy line shot when I probably should have just hit the daggum ball, and then watched as Charlie Van Reese dug it easily and ripped a swing – another swing – right past my seam, sealing my fate in the Hermosa Beach qualifier.

Even after that, I laughed to myself at the irony.

The tank top I had packed for the day to replace my roughly 40-pound, sweat-soaked shirt, was a gift from my girlfriend.

It read Hakuna Matata — no worries for the rest of your days.

It was perfect.

Read the rest of the story in VolleyballMag.com!

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AVP Hermosa: Sometimes, you must simply be the man in the arena

I had to appreciate the irony.

Even after I had shared a very long, cathartic moment with the Pacific Ocean, staring into everything, staring into nothing; even after I had missed far too many blocks and hit a loopy line shot when I probably should have just hit the goddamn ball, and then watched as Charlie Van Reese dug it easily and ripped a swing – another swing – right past my seam, sealing my fate in the Hermosa Beach qualifier.

Even after that, I laughed to myself at the irony.

The tank top I had packed for the day to replace my roughly 40-pound, sweat-soaked shirt, was a gift from my girlfriend.

It read Hakuna Matata — no worries for the rest of your days.

It was perfect.

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This column will be different. The vast majority of my columns – all of them, I hope – focus on the success of others. As a student of journalism since I was 15, I’ve been taught that’s how it should be, and I like it better that way.

But as I was driving home from Hermosa, I got a call from my editor at VolleyballMag.com, Lee Feinswog, who was positively beatific.

“Dude,” he said. “You’ve got your own thread on VolleyTalk. You’ve officially made it.”

We both laughed, because threads on VolleyTalk, while sometimes decent sources of information and opinion, can also be borderline absurd. The first example that comes to mind is one titled “Reid’s career goes poof.”

This came after Reid Priddy and Ricardo Santos fell to a heroic, 14-9 comeback effort from Billy Allen and Stafford Slick in the semifinals of AVP San Francisco.

This is Priddy’s first year playing beach full-time. A few months ago, he was in the qualifiers. Now he’s playing with the most decorated blockers in history, making semifinals.

His career will not go poof.

But sometimes VolleyTalk can propose something reasonable. In this case, a user by the name of 405lax posed a question within a statement: “By no means is this meant to hammer the guy (that’s me) but if you can’t qualify in this qualifier, I think it’s fair to say it’s time to reassess what exactly you are doing. That’s the piece I want to read from him, a deep introspection and discussion of the brutal nature of qualifiers and when to say uncle.”

It’s a very fair question, and one I plan on answering, not only because 405lax took the time to ask, which I appreciate, but because I spoke about that very same thing with Maddison McKibbin earlier in the day.

Maddison, if you missed it, had an excellent photo in Sports Illustrated this week, blocking in the San Francisco finals. I gave him my copy, since I was done reading it, and he told me that he appreciated me illuminating, among many aspects of this beautiful sport, the brutality of the qualifiers, and that I should continue doing it.

A deep introspection of qualifier life seems to be the request of the day.

Here goes.

I loathe losing. I loathe losing more than I loathe tequila, social security and New York City. TimeHop recently informed me that the first time I touched a volleyball – indoor or beach – outside of gym class or jungle ball high school graduation parties came almost exactly three years ago, at a blind draw tournament at a bar in a pinprick of a town in Florida named Navarre.

In the three years since, I have lost more in beach volleyball than I did in anything in the first 23 years of my life.

And in those three years, I’ve recited Theodore Roosevelt’s brilliant speech, The Man in the Arena, enough times, after every single loss, that it’s practically branded upon my soul.

If you are unfamiliar with it, this is the part you’re most likely to remember, though there are countless other gems throughout: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I come short again and again.

I’ll be the first to tell you that it sucks. And I’ll be the first to tell you that it packs an extra sting, another squeeze of lemon juice into the wound, when you see teams that you have beaten over and over and over again qualify instead, make main draw instead, see their dreams realized instead.

It’s human to be jealous, envious. And I am. But I am also unspeakably happy for my good friend Myles Muagututia, who is one of the kindest, soft-spoken, humblest, most accomplished athletes I know, as well as his partner Kyle Friend. They’ve busted their ass, and they made main draw.

I’m thrilled for the Partain brothers, Marcus and Miles, a combined 32 years of age, the Davids who unloaded one hell of a slingshot to topple the 59th-seeded Goliath in Matt Motter and Mike Placek, who very well could have been the best team in the entire qualifier.

I couldn’t be more stoked for my buddy Travis Schoonover, who was banned by the AVP for four years, went and succeeded on the NVL, then waved that ban a goodbye with a double middle finger on Thursday when he qualified with Dave Smith.

Ric Cervantes and Mike Stewart, another pair of wonderful, humble young men whom I never heard say a single negative word about anyone or anything, deserved this, too.

The Seattle fellas, Brett Ryan and Brian Miller, have done all the right things, and would you look at that, they made a main draw, which will likely guarantee automatic berths into the next two – they’ve already sealed up Manhattan, and a good finish in either will boost them into Chicago.

But, yes, I’m human. Of course I look to Myles and Kyle and scratch my head and wonder why that couldn’t be me, because not three weeks ago I was beating them in practice, and hardly a year ago, I was playing with Myles as my first California partner, and we got our first win in a qualifier together.

Of course I look to Ozz Borges and Bruno Amorim, both of whom I consider friends though neither of whom I can immediately recall ever losing to, and wonder how they could make it and I couldn’t.

Of course I look to the Seattle guys and let my head droop, because as good as they are, and as great of people as they are, and as much as I enjoy seeing them succeed, my perpetually wandering mind immediately rewound to the first round in San Francisco, when I beat them with Schoonover.

Of course I look to Mike Boag, and I shake his hand and genuinely mean it when I say congratulations, but also wince a bit, because my mind was already replaying my match against Boag in the Huntington Beach qualifier, when DR and I soundly beat him in two.

Of course I look to Jake Rosener and Garrett Wessberg, and while I’m happy for them and their tremendous main draw accomplishment, I’m also happy while gulping down one more heaping swig of Abita Purple Haze, because not too long ago, in a CBVA in Manhattan Beach, Jorge Martinez and I took them down in two, which was preceded by a two-set win over Spencer Sauter, another main draw player, and was followed by a win over Schoonover, and the automatic main draw team of Ben Vaught and Branden Clemens, all of which preceded us pushing AVP semifinalists Ed Ratledge and Eric Zaun to three sets in the final, which we lost.

I think all of these things because I’m human and that’s what human beings do. I try not to write about these stupid things I think because it’s childish, petulant, immature, and altogether shitty.

But this is an introspection, and I intend on it being a very honest one, because I think that what I’m currently thinking and writing is what 78 other losing teams are likely thinking and not writing.

So, what do I intend to do now?

Call it uncle?

Excuse my finely-tuned, well-trained American language, but fuck no.

I do not intend on calling it uncle.

I’ve been an athlete my entire life. I have accepted losing as part of the process just how my second-grade self once accepted that Santa wasn’t real – ruefully, a little pissy, while also logically wrapping my brain around the fact that reindeer cannot fly and not even a magical, overweight, ageless man can employ an army of elves to build toys for a year and deliver every single one of them around the globe in a single night.

Believing that I should be making every main draw three years after first picking up a volleyball is hardly any different than believing in Santa.

I say this ruefully, and more than a little pissy, while also logically wrapping my brain around the fact that this is a tour for professional athletes, and three years and precisely zero coaching – aside from bugging the living shit out of every beach volleyball player I know, asking what I can do better and how – is not nearly enough to be a professional volleyball player.

Have you ever seen anything of significance accomplished within three years of launch? I haven’t.

So this is me calling my shot.

I will make a main draw.

Maybe that won’t come this year, maybe not the next. But it will happen. I know it will happen because I’m a firm believer in the process, and though not everyone will notice, I have noticed every micro and macro improvement throughout this dreaded, shitty, wonderful process.

Last year, in Huntington Beach, when I won my first qualifier match, I celebrated like I won the whole damn tournament. I celebrated because that first monkey was off my back, and also because I knew full well that I was going to get my ass handed to me in the next round by Ty Loomis and Ed Ratledge, and they kindly dispensed of Myles and I quickly, painlessly.

Four-hundred and forty-two days have passed since that qualifier, and I’ve seen a great many changes in my game – I can occasionally pass in the correct zip code, sometimes I even hit it in the big box on the other side of the net commonly known as ‘in bounds,’ I hand set everything I can get my paws on, which is, for the most part, everything, and the refs don’t blow their whistles so much anymore when I do.

Most notably, I’ve seen my mindset change. I go into tournaments expecting to qualify. Maybe I’m crazy for thinking that, seeing as I’ve never done it.

But I also believe that to achieve anything noteworthy, you need to be a little crazy. I believe all of this. Truly, I do. But this does not mean that I do not doubt myself.

Far, far from it.

Would you like to know why Schoonover and I didn’t play together in Hermosa?

I thought that I had tanked so badly in San Francisco that he wouldn’t want to run with me ever again, and I’d have never blamed him for it. I didn’t even bother reaching out.

Turns out, he would have been happy to run it with me, because Schoonover loathes blocking as much as I loathe tequila, social security, and New York City.

And I also can’t help but wonder if Schoonover and I would have qualified had I played in Dave Smith’s stead. Maybe. Maybe not.

All I know is that I did not qualify, and Schoonover did, but what matters to me is that I wasn’t sitting behind a computer screen, watching livestreams, wondering the two most haunting words a human being can wonder: What if?

I don’t have to wonder what if.

I was the proverbial man in the arena, and while my face was not marred by dust and blood, I erred, and I came short again, and I recognize that there is no effort without error and shortcoming.

This will happen again, and again, and again…and againandagainandagain as I continue to grow and my goals change and with it so will my definition of shortcoming.

I know this. It’s a shitty thing to accept, but it’s something I have long accepted. Am I about to drop my professional goals as a writer, abandon my career, go live with Zaun in a rusting Dodge Sprinter and devote myself fully to beach volleyball?

No.

But will I stop playing? Absolutely not.

Beach volleyball will never make me rich in material fortune, but it has already made me rich in every intangible aspect of life. Beach volleyball is how I met my girlfriend of 2 1/2 years, who still loves me no matter how poorly I play, and who isn’t afraid to tell me just how poorly I did play. Beach volleyball is how I met all but a handful of friends in Florida, and it is how I have met every single new friend in California. Prior to picking up this sport, I could count on one hand the number of beaches I had been to. Now, it may take 20 or 30 minutes for me to sit down and chart all of the places I’ve been and seen, and all the memories and stories that accompany each photogenic, sometimes alcohol-blurred setting.

Beach volleyball has led to my greatest passion — not playing beach volleyball, but writing about it. Of the 10 or so outlets I currently write or edit for, VolleyballMag.com and DiG Magazine are without a doubt my favorites, and I can assure you this is not for the pay.

Beach volleyball is, put simply, my muse.

And some day, if the stars align and God continues to smile down upon me for a bit longer, maybe I can be a beach volleyball player who writes, and not the other way around.

For now, I’ll continue to be the man in the arena, and I’ll continue to fall short, and I’ll continue to learn because of it.

When I’ll make a main draw, I do not yet know.

What I do know is this: I will never be, as Roosevelt so brilliantly wrote, one of “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

For now, I know defeat, and I’ll continue to be that man in the arena until I know victory.

So there you have it. There’s your introspection, your deep dive into the mental gymnastics of a qualifier player, your beach volleyball equivalent of the man in the arena.

AVP Hermosa: Calling all ghosts of beach volleyball’s past

The first thing Kevin Cleary will always remember is the crowd.

It didn’t begin as the massive, heckling contingent that would mob the Manhattan Beach Pier. It began simply, just a couple of his buddies from Mira Costa giving Steve O’Bradovich and Gary Hooper a tough time while the “bad boys of beach volleyball,” as Cleary describes them, were about to make quick work Cleary and Joel Jones, a pair of unseeded teenagers.

Only that never happened.

Cleary and Jones, high school pals, stunned top-seeded Hooper and O’Bradovich in the first set of the Manhattan Beach Open, 11-8. Midway through the second, word had gotten out about the scrappy young teens taking it to beach volleyball’s loudest and most exuberant team.

“I’ll never forget about halfway through the second game, my head’s down in serve receive, and I look up and there are thousands of people around the court,” Cleary recalled. “I was like ‘Jesus, wow!’ The pier was lined with people and basically word had traveled around that these two kids in gym shorts were beating the No. 1 ranked team in the tournament.”

The kids won the second, sending the bad boys to the contenders bracket, where they would ultimately grind through to take third for the tournament.

This was 1978.

Six years later, Cleary would go on to become the first president of the AVP Tour and has missed only one or two Manhattan Beach Opens since. In 2010, he was inducted into the CBVA Hall of Fame.

And the guy is still playing.

Scroll down far enough on the endless AVP Hermosa Beach Open entry list and you can find him, just there, Kevin Cleary and Jack Walmer, seeded (initially) No. 82 in a qualifier of 86 teams.

Read the rest of the preview in VolleyballMag.com!

AVP San Francisco: We’ve entered the era of the Baby Court

I’m doing it. I’m pouring myself a big, heaping, ice cold glass of the AVP Cool-Aid and I’m tilting that thing back.

I’m sold.

I wasn’t for a long time. I thought the Civil War between Donald Sun and Kerri Walsh-Jennings and the NVL and Leonard Armato had the potential to fracture the sport beyond repair. Either that, or the added competition of another heavyweight, Armato, was going to push Sun to put together a massively improved product.

It appears to have done the latter.

Every single event this season has been spectacular – and that’s with two major events being sucked dry of the top talent due to bigger FIVBs!

Huntington was mobbed. Austin was sold out. Seattle and New York, the beginning of the Gold Series, were like the supermodels of AVP sites. San Francisco proved telegenic as always, and the fire marshals have had to limit spectators two years in a row now because the stadium was packed beyond capacity.

Nobody is making millions playing the AVP just yet. But the product is proving attractive, and the sport is progressing.

It helps, of course, that the weather has been abnormally wonderful for every event. Jeff Conover, the AVP tournament director, said that, at one point, nine of 10 AVP events had rain or just tough weather.

This year, we’re 5-for-5.

I’m in, and it seems I’m not alone.

After another fantastic event, I’ve gotta say: Well done once again, AVP Tour.

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Hawaiians on a “manifest destiny”

Since November, I’ve been working on my third book, which will be a non-fiction dive into beach volleyball. For the past eight months or so, I’ve been cobbling together interviews and digging into a borderline obsessive amount of research on this magnificent sport. Below is a snippet from the rough manuscript that I’d like you to read:

Let’s fast forward a moment. 

We’re going to a birthday party.

It’s either 1999 or 2000. Taylor Crabb can’t remember exactly. Since that day in 1915 [when the Outrigger Canoe Club was founded], Outrigger has built three beach volleyball courts, though today, the two courts reserved for the adults are not where the action is. Just to the side you’ll find what has become affectionately known as the “baby court,” which is, as always, teeming with youngsters.

“When you’re nine, ten, eleven, all the way to fifteen, that’s the court you want to play on,” said Riley McKibbin, “because you can hit the ball over the net and you don’t even have to run down a high line shot because it’s like three steps away.”

On this occasion, the baby court is packed for Reese Haines’s birthday, for which his father has arranged a 2-on-2 tournament.

Look there, it’s McKibbin and Bourne. They’re the geezers of the group – almost teenagers! It explains why they’re playing together. And there’s Trevor Crabb and Brad Lawson, too. As for the youngsters? That’s Taylor Crabb and Riley’s kid brother, Maddison. Another set of brothers, Erik and Kawika Shoji have scored invites as well. 

Take a snapshot of this precocious crew. You may never see another one like it.

Fast forward again, all the way to 2016. That little birthday crew? They have blossomed into the most formidable group of volleyball players in the world. All in all, in 2016 alone, the nine kids in attendance at that party would go on to combine for eight AVP finals, eight AVP semifinals, four NORCECA wins, eight top-five finishes on the FIVB Tour, one beach Olympic qualification, 10 additional AVP main draws, and two indoor Olympic bronze medals.

The reason I leave you with that little preview – the goal is to have the book ready to go prior to the 2018 season – is because each of the last four AVP finals have featured at least one member from that Baby Court crew. Trevor Crabb lost the finals in Austin to Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, who are, objectively speaking, the best team in the world. Taylor Crabb picked up his first win in New York. Trevor lost a three-setter in Seattle. Maddison McKibbin, who began the year in the qualifiers and hadn’t made a semifinal, smoked Eric Zaun and Ed Ratledge in the semifinals to make his first final, alongside Ty Loomis.

“The Hawaiians, man,” Avery Drost said. “It’s manifest destiny.”

And indeed it was, even without arguably the best of the Hawaiians, Tri Bourne. McKibbin put the final block on a 24-22, 21-19 for his first win, the Baby Court’s second of the season, and Loomis’ first since 2009.

Speaking of…

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Ty Loomis is back and throwing sand so let’s celebrate that

One of my favorite videos on the internet is the 2009 AVP Coney Island final between Ty Loomis and Casey Patterson and Sean Scott and John Hyden.

There are a lot of reasons for this – baby-faced Casey is great, and gollee could the AVP pack the stadiums back then – though none better than the demeanor of Patterson and Loomis. They scream and celebrate and hoot and holler every single point. Every pokey, dig, block, ace, kill, whatever, receives an Olympic gold medal-type celebration. I think at one point they celebrate how great their celebrations are.

It’s great television.

The two youngsters beat big bad Hyden-Scott to win their first AVP tournament.

Patterson has since enjoyed an abundance of success. Loomis, however, went the next eight years without another finals appearance.

It’s been odd watching Loomis struggle this season, and a little bit of last year, when he once failed to make it out of a qualifier (for transparency’s sake, he smashed me in that qualifier, in Huntington Beach). Prior to San Francisco, his best finish this season was ninth. In Seattle two weeks ago, he only won a single set.

San Francisco was a different story. Loomis, after battling a balky knee in New York, appeared to be fully back. He smashed angles and chopped lines, dug almost everything hard driven that was sent his way, and typically buried the transition.

In the finals, he was phenomenal. His line shots were good enough that Billy Allen hardly bothered to make a move on a few. His angle swings were vicious. His cut shots were sharp.

Of course, his fervor for celebrations has not waned, throwing sand, yelling, pumping up the crowd.

When McKibbin threw down the final block, Loomis tackled him to the ground and they barrel rolled together, one big sandy mess.

Was it the show that Loomis and Patterson put on in 2009? I’m not sure.

But who knows, maybe eight years from now, we’ll look back upon the Loomis-McKibbin victory with similarly fond nostalgia.

Kelley Larsen has taken over

One of the most dominant blocking performances I’ve seen on the women’s side of the game did not, oddly, come from Kerri Walsh-Jennings. It was delivered by Kim DiCello in the 2016 New Orleans finals.

Playing alongside the diminutive and appropriately crafty Kendra VanZwieten, DiCello touched everything. Whatever she didn’t roof she at least soft-blocked, and she went on to finish the tournament with 26 blocks, double that of the next-closest contender.

Kelley Larsen is giving DiCello a run for her money.

Her performance in the San Francisco finals was stunning. Betsi Flint, Larsen’s defender, is an excellent volleyball player, but the match was completely and totally controlled by Larsen. She forced Lane Carico and Alex Klineman, a team she had lost to earlier in the tournament, well outside of their comfort zones. There may have been more shots and swings that she got her hand on than shots that she didn’t.

Fittingly, she closed the tournament with 17 blocks, second to Klineman’s 21. Flint, meanwhile, playing behind that massive block, finished with 119 digs, 32 more than No. 2 Carico.

That’s an average of 8.5 digs and 1.21 blocks per set.

Volleyball is generally, and correctly, viewed as an offensive game. The best sideout team typically wins.

Larsen and Flint are flipping that script, with a win in San Francisco to back them up.

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Carico has found her blocker – I think

It makes me really, really happy when I kind of go out on a limb and make a somewhat bold prediction and it comes to fruition. It doesn’t happen often, so allow me one second to celebrate correctly believing in Alex Klineman and Lane Carico.

They’re good. They’re very good, and there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t be. Their games complement each other splendidly.

I couldn’t be any more impressed with Carico this season. Last year, alongside Summer Ross, she made the finals in New York and cemented herself into Manhattan Beach lore by getting her name on the pier.

And then she voluntarily (!!) dove back into the qualifiers.

She nearly didn’t make it out in New York, going to three sets in the second round of the qualifier. At the end of the day, she did make it out, though her and Sarah Pavan took a disappointing 13th, which preceded a somewhat disappointing fifth with Lauren Fendrick in Seattle.

Klineman, meanwhile, whiffed on both New York and Seattle, and didn’t win a match in Austin. Neither were playing particularly well coming in, but something about the two playing together atoned for whatever individual struggles they were having.

After a tight first round, they waxed Geena Urango and Angela Bensend, 21-11, 22-20; controlled a good match against Betsi Flint and Kelley Larsen, 21-13, 30-28; smacked Urango and Bensend again in the semifinals, 21-16, 21-16.

Carico has done a fair amount of bouncing around with partners this season, playing with five thus far.

It appears she’s found her match.

Behind Klineman’s block, she finished second in digs. Klineman led both in blocks and aces.

Carico’s long search for a blocker may alas be over.

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“Name’s Allen, Billy Allen.”

My god. Billy Allen.

I knew Allen was a phenomenal volleyball player, and a spot-on James Bond doppelganger (Ed Ratledge deserves credit for pointing that out). Prior to San Francisco, he was playing better than anyone on Tour without question. And if you missed his semifinal against Ricardo Santos and Reid Priddy, you missed one of the finest displays of volleyball this season.

Somewhere in the second set, Stafford Slick, Allen’s blocker, began suffering what was being called spasms in his oblique. He swung left-handed, refused to do anything but shoot when using his right, had his block cut in half because he couldn’t fully extend.

Simply put: Slick was playing at perhaps 40 percent, if that.

Enter Allen.

Down 14-10 at the freeze, with no momentum, no positive energy, no nothing, really. Ricardo, a typically stoic individual, was pumping up the crowd. Priddy was abusing volleyballs. The freeze appeared to only delay the inevitable: The Olympians were going to make a final.

Allen evidently had other plans. Slick couldn’t block, so Allen did, and he roofed Priddy – something Slick had a lot of trouble doing – picked up a soft-block and transitioned it for a kill, peeled to funnel weak shots to Slick, put balls away on two, set Slick where he needed it.

He took over, in a sport where willing a win is nearly impossible. In other mainstream sports – basketball, football, soccer – you can assert yourself by demanding the ball. Just watch Russell Westbrook.

But that’s exceptionally difficult in volleyball, where the other team can freeze a player out, which is exactly what Priddy and Santos were wisely doing to Allen. They served Slick every ball, transitioned everything to Slick, attacked Slick’s block instead of Allen’s defense. Allen elbowed his way back in. He took more seam on serve-receive. He blocked. He went on two.

He took over, asserting himself not just as possibly the best defender on Tour, but as the best overall player.

The same magic couldn’t be mustered in the finals. Slick appeared markedly better in the finals than the semis, but he still didn’t look all there, and Allen still had to press. Quite honestly, it’s remarkable that both sets went to extra points, given that Slick, maybe the most physical player on Tour, couldn’t be physical.