Maddison McKibbin, the trailblazer who did it all perfectly backwards

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Maddison McKibbin was doing it all wrong.

Sometime around 2017 — the details for such matters are hazy — Tri Bourne had to inform his good friend of how things worked in the world of business and beach volleyball, and the tenuous connection between the two.

“Dude,” he told him, “you’re not going to get sponsors until you win.”

That was the formula as Bourne, and everyone else on Tour, knew it then: Win on the AVP first, build a brand second, pitch sponsors third.

“I was like ‘Oh, OK,’ v” McKibbin recalled on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter.

And then he went on doing what we was doing anyway: Making videos, building a brand, and, yes, eventually winning. The result spoke volumes: McKibbin and his older brother, Riley, inked a sponsorship deal with Wilson before Bourne, this in spite Bourne having already won three AVPs and an FIVB, while Maddison and Riley were still working through the qualifiers and had produced a grand total of one video for their upstart YouTube Channel.

“I was winning, and they didn’t come,” Bourne said of the sponsors. “I realized they aren’t caring what you’re doing on the court, they care about how many people watch you, what your personal brand is, and how you can help sell their product. You need to build your personal brand in order to do that.”

The McKibbins are arguably the biggest trailblazing beach volleyball players of this generation. Yes, brothers had played with moderate success before them — Andrew and Sinjin Smith, Greg and Jon Lee, Trevor and Taylor Crabb, to name a few. Yes, players and coaches had shot videos and put them on YouTube, ranging from blurry tutorials to players talking simply story. But never had a pair of players combined storytelling, video production, and a high level of play and bundled them into a package deal anywhere close to the quality of the McKibbins — a package to which fans continue flocking in the hundreds of thousands.

“Someone asked me the other day, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ I was like, if you asked me that five years ago, and you told me what we’re doing now, I’d be like ‘Whoa, what happened?’ ” Maddison recalled, laughing.

Five years ago, the McKibbins were the owners of a single video: Hop Step Defense for Beach Volleyball. It’s 42 seconds long, has slightly north…