Travis Mewhirter's Blog, page 17

AVP San Francisco: Embracing the process… in Redwood City

It’s a process.

That’s what they say, at least. And I believe it. It’s just not so easy to accept when that process drop kicks you, smashes your face in the sand, makes you eat some white dog poop – a Step Brothers reference, if you missed it – and steals your lunch money while you’re down.

That’s basically what happened in San Francisco today.

We won our first. And by “we,” I mean Travis Schoonover and I. He played awesome. We beat a pair of Seattle guys, Brett Ryan and Brian Miller, who sent me packing in Austin. It felt nice, especially since we went down 9-5 in the third and jump-served and poked and scrambled and grinded our way back in it.

It was Babe Ruth who said “It’s hard to beat a guy who doesn’t give up.” Schoonover didn’t give up on me, and indeed we proved hard to beat.

And then came the second round.

Raffe Paulis and Spencer Sauter.

I know both of them very well. We trained against them this week, and then when the brackets were reseeded, we were inevitably placed in their bracket. That’s just the way beach volleyball works. When you break up with a partner, you play that guy first round, every time, in the next tournament. When you train against a team, you play them in the ensuing tournament, every time.

We actually played them very well in training. Every game went to deuces. We won in three.

And then came San Francisco.

Raffe played probably the best volleyball I’ve ever seen him play. He dug seams. He dug lines. He crawled to cut shots and somehow popped them up, too. And he didn’t just pop them up. He flipped them perfectly into Spencer’s platform, and he either took out the driver and teed it up or set Raffe, who then took out the driver and teed it up.

Spencer, too, balled out. He set well. Raffe pounded everything. He passed well, and the ensuing sideouts were easy.

They dropped a beach volleyball nuke on us, 21-15, 21-12. Or something. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was worse. I’m too scared to check BVB, to be honest.

It was one of those losses where you sit in the chair by the sidelines, and you don’t even say anything. You just let your mind wander to wherever minds go after being obliterated into outer space. Adam Roberts handed me my sunglasses and I don’t even know if I thanked the guy. I was, physically and mentally, mute.

It was one of those losses where, afterwards, you hop in the shower, and you just put your hands on the wall, let your head droop, and run the water and take a flashlight to your soul and do some inspecting.

It’s amazing, the existential crisis such a beautiful sport, and losing two games to two of your buddies, can send you into.

It helped when Raffe and Spencer did the same to TK Kohler and Art Barron in the finals. I don’t know the score, but it wasn’t too close.

Evidently they travel packing nukes.

As far as I know, nobody came within two of those guys all day.

This marks Spencer’s first main draw via qualifier, and I’d expect that, given how he played, he won’t have to play in too many more.

They earned every bit of this main draw. Afterwards, Spencer said he was literally too excited, he didn’t have the words to express it. His cheeks hurt from smiling.

I loved that. Spencer is a great guy who has done all the right things – move to California, train and train and train, play in qualifiers, move up and advance and be nothing but beatific throughout it all.

In that moment, I was both happy for him and incredibly envious that I wasn’t too excited for words. I was at a loss of words for all the wrong reasons.

The rest of the qualifier was pretty much par for the course.

Adam Roberts and Brian Cook, who picked up some AVP points just after deadline, cruised through to main draw. And here I want to point something out: If nothing else illustrates the difference between qualifying teams and main draw teams, it is Adam Roberts.

Adam has had, relative to him, a subpar year. He has taken three ninths and was then sent back into the qualifier. Nobody wants to be in the qualifier.

But Adam absolutely, unequivocally dominated. Whatever shortcomings he may have had thus far in the main draw, they are not evident in the qualifier. He sided out at an astonishingly consistent clip, tagging lines, finding seams.

Cook, his partner, has an indoor background and is making the transition to the beach. He swings harder than you, and in the big blue box he’s supposed to, and on Adam’s buttery sets, he’s going to side out. They make for a good team.

How they’ll do in the main draw, I don’t know. But that’s the difference: Adam Roberts made quick work of good volleyball teams in the qualifier.

For the doubters: He’s still a main draw volleyball player.

Shane Donohue, meanwhile, should not have a single doubter, if he even does at this point. The guy is en fuego, qualifying in New York, winning Pottstown, sweeping the San Francisco qualifier with Ian Satterfield.

They were stress free, winning their final set of the final match 21-12, which is basically how they played all day – smooth, controlled, consistent volleyball. It’s the kind of volleyball that gets you through qualifiers.

Ben Vaught and Branden Clemens, alas avoiding two individuals by the name of Chaim Schalk and Ricardo Santos, played six sets and won six sets, making their second main draw of the year. With Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Chicago all being big draws, they should be automatic from here on out.

I’m happy for Benny. I’m always happy for Benny. This kid wakes up at 4:30 in the morning to trek to San Diego to play with Clemens, who is doing all of this while fully employed like a real person in the real world.

Some may look at their road and scoff – “It was easy,” “I wish I had that road.”

They earned whatever road they had.

They deserve it.

As for the rest of us?

It’s a process.

A really long, frustrating, lose-and-learn-and-lose-and-learn and hope you don’t lose your wit process.

 

The site

A huge congrats goes out to the following:

Camie Manwill and Maria Salgado

Lara Dykstra and Allie Wheeler

Terese Cannon and Nicollete Martin

Branagan Fuller and Delaney Knudsen

I want to write about the women. I really do. But I legitimately have no idea what happened over there, aside from what BVB has for me.

Why?

We were separated by 30 miles, or 10 hours’ worth of San Francisco traffic.

The AVP had to split the site. There was really no option. Eighty-four total teams were in the qualifiers, and there was no way a site that isn’t a natural beach can accommodate that. So the women finally – they were bumped to off-site venues in Austin and I believe New York, so it was their turn – got to play at the main draw site, while the guys were moved into a parking lot of a place called The Foundry.

The place itself was cool. It had batting cages and basketball hoops and indoor volleyball courts and a sweet little weight room and a turf something or other and is a young athlete’s funhouse. And the courts weren’t bad. Really, they weren’t.

But to have a professional volleyball event – yes, I consider qualifiers quasi-professional, since many players (Roberts, for one) in qualifiers do this for a living – this was not a great look.

The sand was, in spots, inches deep. Donohue slipped on concrete.

Concrete?

In beach volleyball?

I’m not one to complain. We get to play an amazing sport, in amazing cities, for – kinda, sorta – money. But yes, I was disappointed. I don’t think I’m alone there. I wanted the Golden Gate Bridge and the telegenic backdrop and real San Francisco.

We played the first day of #AVPSanFran in Redwood City.

I’ll give all the credit in the world to the staff at The Foundry. They were excellent. They raked and raked and tried to fluff that sand until it was Easter Bunny soft – until it got swept over and we were turning on concrete again.

You can have fun events in venues like that. Junior tournaments. Maybe even a youth USAV something or other.

But if growing the game truly is the goal of the AVP, sites like this shouldn’t happen if it is to appear professional.

I have to wonder why we didn’t play at, say, Stanford, with a Division I beach complex and a cool setting and a very NorCal vibe. That would have been a good look. I know I can’t be the first one to think of that, so maybe there was more to it. Money, probably, which beach volleyball notoriously does not have.

Either way, good site or bad site or just a shallow site, the best teams qualified today. That’s what matters.

Raffe and Spencer played excellent and qualified.

Satterfield and Donohue payed excellent and qualified.

Roberts and Cook played excellent and qualified.

Ben and Clemens played excellent and qualified.

The best teams won, no matter the site.

 

AVP Midseason Awards: Billy Allen, Stafford Slick, Phil Dalhausser leading the way

When Stafford Slick put up a 6-foot-8, goggled roof for one final block in Seattle, putting an exclamation point on the first AVP Tour win of his career, we officially reached the midpoint of the AVP season.

We’re four events in with four to go. It’s going by depressingly fast.

Contrary to other major sports, which get an All-Star break or a dunk contest or some form of intermission, beach volleyball heads into the midpoint at its busiest juncture, with two five-star FIVBs, two AVPs, an NVL and the World Series of Beach Volleyball all in the same month.

That said, it’s time to take a look at some mid-season awards, and what players are in line to take home some hardware at the end of the season.

Best blocker

Phil Dalhausser

I really don’t feel like I need to qualify this answer with an explanation. He’s Phil freaking Dalhausser. He’s the best blocker in the world, and every AVP tournament he plays in, he finishes in the top two in blocks. More than that, he’s the best setter in the world, which in turn makes him that much better at his job as a blocker, as transition setting might be the most important aspect of being an effective blocker. As long as Dalhausser is alive and healthy, he should win this award, and there really shouldn’t be much of an argument, hence why he’s my only nominee.

 

 

Best server

Reid Priddy/Jeremy Casebeer

I’m lumping these two together because their styles are so similar: They hit jump serves so hard, with so many RPMs, that it seems their goal is less to ace their opponent than it is to knock them over. Priddy willed a win over Eric Zaun and Marty Lorenz by acing his way back into it, and Casebeer should receive a large portion of the credit for a huge win over Ricardo and Chaim Schalk for his performance at the service line.


Sean Rosenthal

Rosie isn’t necessarily hitting with the same brute force he used to, but the spots he’s picking, as evidenced by his number of aces, are sharper and proving difficult to pass. He finished third in aces in Austin with 9, fourth in New York (8) and second in Seattle (8).

Best Defender

Taylor Crabb

More than any other defender in the country, when Taylor Crabb is playing defense, I expect him to touch anything that Jake Gibb doesn’t block. It’s an unfair expectation to have, of course, but that’s how good he is. He makes the routine digs he should make, but he also makes some of the most spectacular defensive plays I’ve ever seen. There’s a reason he won this award in 2016.


Billy Allen

I think it was Chris Marlowe on an NBC broadcast who said “Mr. Right Place and the Right Time” when describing Allen in the finals in Seattle. That pretty much sums it up. Allen, without taking stupid risks and guessing every play, always seems to be where the ball is headed, a big reason he won again in Seattle and made consecutive finals.

 

 

Best Offensive Player

Phil Dalhausser

I didn’t want to pick Dalhausser simply because few teams are suicidal enough to serve him. He won this award last year, and Nick Lucena could hardly believe it, because the guy never has the chance to be an offensive player, let alone the best offensive player. But dammit, I can’t help it. He’s too good. I can’t NOT pick Dalhausser. When he gets the ball, he puts it away. It should be viewed as a nod to his offensive abilities, not a negative, that nobody wants him to have the ball. Baseball writers don’t punish Mike Trout for being intentionally walked at record-setting rates, and I won’t punish Dalhausser for the volleyball equivalent of being intentionally walked every match since, like, 2005.

Most Improved

Stafford Slick

Ever since Slick’s bizarre and frightening injury last year in New Orleans, the guy has been en fuego. He made the finals in New York and then picked up his first win two weeks later in Seattle. What little was holding his game back appears to be gone, and by season’s end he may very well be in discussion for MVP.


Ed Ratledge

The Eagle! One of my favorite people in California, Ratledge might also be the most confounding to play defense against. Any blocker under 6-foot-6 will get the OT treatment, every single time, no exception. It drives Trevor Crabb nuts. His option game is unstoppable, and he’s secretly one of the better setting big men out there. His two fifths with Zaun have already matched his career-high for a single season.

 

Newcomer of the Year

Note: I will not consider Ricardo or Chaim Schalk for Newcomer of the Year for the simple fact that they are far too accomplished, in my mind, to ever be “newcomers.” Ricardo has won multiple Olympic medals and more tournaments than any active player in the world. Schalk went to the Olympics. Yes, they’re “newcomers” to the AVP Tour, in the technical sense because they are “new” to the AVP Tour, but they’re far too accomplished in this sport for me to divvy out an award on a technicality.

Eric Zaun

My man Zaun lives in his 2006 Dodge Sprinter and scrounges together some sustenance from Kind bars and the occasional splurge on Pho. If nothing else, he’s the Most Interesting Man on Tour. But he’s also really, really good, taking a pair of fifths in his first four events, beating an Olympian in Casey Patterson and one of the best teams on Tour in Billy Allen and Stafford Slick.


Reid Priddy

Priddy is a newcomer because he has never seriously pursued beach before, unlike Ricardo and Schalk. After barely missing out on qualifying in Huntington Beach, he took a fifth in Austin, grabbed a ninth in New York and a seventh in Seattle. He serves as well as anyone on Tour, and when he catches a ball flush it just will not be dug.

 

 

Most Valuable Player

Billy Allen

The humblest guy on Tour might also be its most valuable. Nobody gives less credit to himself than Allen, who after his win in Seattle said that he just “always has a partner get hot,” as if his outlandishly controlled defense and hyper-effective offense weren’t the chief reasons for winning both years. Offensively, he’s masterful, and defensively, he’s something of a clairvoyant, somehow always winding up exactly where the ball is.


Phil Dalhausser

He’s the best blocker in the world, best setter in the world, best server in the world, and best offensive player in the world. I rest my case.

Best Team

Jake Gibb-Taylor Crabb

As far as teams I’d like to play against the least, this is No. 1. Scoring on these guys has proven to be a Herculean feat, and anybody doubting how Crabb would do in transitioning to the left side has been convincingly silenced. Offensively, neither is particularly error prone. They’re one of the best teams in transition. When the second greatest blocker in American history is providing the first line of defense for the 2016 Defender of the Year, well, that’s a formula that works, and it has quite well.


Stafford Slick-Billy Allen

Perhaps the surprise team of the year, these two have been remarkably consistent, with two finals appearances and a win. Allen, Mr. Consistent, is playing as well as anybody in the country at the moment, and Stafford Slick has, in Allen’s words, turned into the Incredible Hulk. They’ve agreed to play all eight AVPs this season. Another couple finals appearances are not out of the question.

 

AVP Seattle: Billy Allen able to enjoy a win; Stafford Slick has gone Hulk mode

Billy Allen couldn’t enjoy it. Not a year ago. Not really.

A year ago, Allen hardly even got to warm up for the AVP Seattle final. He and Theo Brunner, with an FIVB qualifier in Hamburg just a few days away, were booking it to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, checking their bags between the semifinal and the final, hightailing it back just in time to be introduced for the gold-medal match against Taylor and Trevor Crabb.

“I was stressed out because of that,” Allen told me a few months ago. “But it also helped out because it never gave me time to worry about playing in a final. We were just so worried about making it to the airport that it just kind of helped with the nerves.”

Evidently so. Allen and Brunner won in three sets for Allen’s first AVP Tour win.

A quick picture and an abbreviated celebration later, he and Brunner sped to the airport, caught their flight, qualified, played in an FIVB main draw, flew to Poland, made that main draw, too, and flew home.

Then, and only then, could Allen finally digest the fact that he was an AVP champion.

Read the rest at VolleyballMag.com!

Related: Is the score freeze actually kind of a good thing?

AVP Seattle: Is the score freeze actually kind of a good thing?

I don’t want to say it. I can’t believe I am actually about to say it. But guys…

I think I like the score freeze.

I know, I know. The concept of it is strange, totally asinine, borderline absurd. To flip the rules, after playing a match for around an hour and sometimes more, is, at its core, flat out indefensible.

How can you change the game…in the middle of the game? Worse: How can you change the game at the most critical juncture?

Golfers don’t need to birdie or eagle No. 18 to win.

NBA teams don’t need to finish on an alley-oop flourish.

The MLB doesn’t demand walk-off home runs nightly.

Yet the AVP does require that, in order to win, the winning team must earn its last point, a reversion to the anachronistic side-out scoring.

I think it bears repeating that the other, I don’t know, 100 points of the match were played under a different format.

But when I was watching Ed Ratledge and Reid Priddy play Marty Lorenz and Eric Zaun in the first round of the Seattle main draw, I couldn’t help but be thankful for the score freeze. Had the rules been “normal,” we wouldn’t have had three sets. We wouldn’t have had drama. We wouldn’t have had what became an epic third set.

We would have had a run of the mill Zaun-Lorenz win, 21-15, 21-18.

Instead, what we got was Priddy thundering one titanic serve after the next, acing their way back into the match, forcing Lorenz and Zaun out of system enough that they were able to go on a 6-2 run and win the second set, 24-22.

This produced a third, highly entertaining set. Without the score freeze, we would have never had this set.

And each one of us would have been remiss because of it.

Lorenz and Zaun jumped out to a 4-1 lead, which is typically when the Fat Lady begins warming up the golden pipes to begin singing. They maintained that lead, carrying it to 14-12, before Priddy went all indoor-Olympian-gold-medalist-with-a-howitzer-jump-serve on them.

Priddy and Ratledge went on a 4-0 run to claim a 16-14 match win that sent Zaun into a frenzy that was at once fun to watch and heart-achingly easy to empathize with. Ratledge, meanwhile, hugged virtually everyone in sight — Zaun, his former partner; volunteers; the refs. This was also hilarious and all around great to watch.

The score freeze has created a weird dynamic for me, and after talking to a few players, it seems to be a mutual assessment: As fans seeking entertainment, we love it; as players, we loathe it.

As a fan, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Trevor Crabb and Sean Rosenthal storm back to nearly extend their Austin final against Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena. It almost happened.

Without the freeze, that final would have been so incredibly unremarkable and unmemorable that it would be difficult, months from now, to recall who actually played in the final.

But as a player, I couldn’t have agreed any more with Lucena, who told Dain Blanton afterwards that if that match would have gone to three, there would have been some problems.

I do not doubt that there will continue to be players voicing their displeasure with the rule. I haven’t spoken with Zaun, but I have a feeling, judging by the fury he directed at a few misfortunately placed ball blocks, that he has nothing but animosity for the freeze.

I get it. He and Lorenz dominated the first two sets – until it froze. In my mind – and I’d assume theirs, though I could be entirely wrong, as I often am – they earned the right to not have to worry about earning points to win. They had built up enough of a lead to where siding out one time would do the job.

But as a fan, I can’t lie: I was far more entertained by the match than if there had been no score freeze. (I feel like, as a volleyball player — kind of, sort of — I need to cleanse myself just after writing that.)

Was the implementation of the arcane rule worth the price tag, which goes by the name of Kerri Walsh-Jennings and a well-publicized boycott of Chicago, which provided the impetus for a lawsuit and a strange, mounting civil war?

Probably not.

But, seeing as the score freeze is here, and there is not much we can do about it – if Kerri can’t swing Donald Sun’s opinion, I doubt he’d listen to mine – we may as well sit back, laugh at our Facebook LiveStreams, and enjoy it.

AVP Seattle Open preview

The AVP is making its fourth stop of the year, in Seattle, and it is rife with excellent storylines.

Former partners playing in first-round matchups?

Finally a good break for Rafu Rodriguez-Bertran?

Olympians in the qualifier...again?

Another loaded women's field?

The post AVP Seattle Open preview appeared first on Paper Courts.

AVP Seattle preview

Oh, this is rich.

The karmic energies of the volleyball world would have it no other way: Ed Ratledge was going to play Eric Zaun, and that match was going to happen as quickly as possible.

As in: The very first match of the very first tournament either of them played after splitting up. Earlier this week, I spoke with Adam Johnson, one of the all-time great defenders who narrowly missed both the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, and we talked about, among other things, the ’96 Olympics, and how inevitable it was for Karch Kiraly and Sinjin Smith to play one another in what would become one of the most epic volleyball matches of all time.

“It seems like, in a normal AVP tournament, if you dumped your partner or your partner dumped you, somehow you guys were always going to play each other,” Johnson said. “That was the match that everybody wanted to go see. That’s the match that everybody is still talking about.”

This is in no way on the level of Smith-Kiraly, but any time two former partners play one another in a split-up that can be described as less than amicable, the seeds of a rivalry are being sowed.

Read the rest of the story at VolleyballMag.com!

PODCAST: Phil Dalhausser, Olympic gold medalist, joins Paper Courts

He is The Thin Beast, a gold medalist, perhaps the greatest American blocker of all time, if not in the whole world.

But if you’d have asked him in college if he would have ever been a beach volleyball player, his answer would have been a resounding no. But when you’re nearly 7 feet tall, can set better than anyone on the planet, side out nearly every time and are peerless at the net, well, a career on the beach is a no-brainer.

Enjoy my conversation with Dalhausser, and excuse the rough sound quality.

Related:

Ben Vaught joins Paper Courts. 

Let’s not break up Casey Patterson and Theo Brunner just yet

Put the dynamite away. Stow the C4. Let the fuse remain unlit.

Let’s not blow up Casey Patterson and Theo Brunner just yet.

Yes, they’ve had two bad tournaments, in New York and The Hague, Netherlands. Even then, I’m not even sure bad fits the bill.

So let’s hold on just a second before we start demanding a partnership breakup because of two rough – kind of rough – tournaments.

They took fifth in New York. For Patterson, this isn’t great, particularly when considering that the first loss was to 11th-seeded Ed Ratledge and Eric Zaun and they also benefitted from a forfeit from Nick Lucena and Phil Dalhausser, who bailed when Nick’s wife, Brooke, went into labor.

Their other loss came in the quarterfinals to Ricardo Santos and Chaim Schalk, the very team that put Dalhausser and Lucena in the contender’s bracket in the first place. I’ve written enough on both that it should be patently clear at this point that losing to that team should come with no shame whatsoever.

Playing today in the FIVB Moscow event at 1:10pm. Hopefully @richyusa won't be judging us from behind all day

AVP New York: A golden start to the Gold Series

What a difference a year makes.

In 2016, there may have been no tournament more uneventful and predictable than New York City. Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena won five straight matches in five straight sets. Not a single team managed to score more than a total of 31 points on the Olympians. Their longest match was 50 minutes, which came in the finals against Jeremy Casebeer and Sean Rosenthal.

In the deciding set, they scored 12 points.

Now, this is nothing less than a supreme compliment to Dalhausser and Lucena, who are so good at volleyball that watching them play on the AVP Tour is often tantamount to watching the Golden State Warriors play the Philadelphia 76ers: There may be exciting moments here and there, but the outcome is rarely, if ever, in doubt.

But, oh, what a difference a year, and an odd Brazilian-Canadian mishmash of a team, can make.

Ricardo Santos, the legendary Brazilian blocker who provided The Wall for iconic defender Emanuel Rego, joined Canadian Chaim Schalk in the Big Apple.

Read the rest of the story in VolleyballMag.com.

The Paper Courts podcast returns: AVP rookie Ben Vaught

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!

**** A note: I make a mistake during the interview with Ben. I tell him that it took Billy Allen 10 main draws to get a main draw win, when instead I should have said that it took 10 main draws to pick up a FIRST ROUND main draw win. Crazy the difference two words can make (apologies, Billy).