Answering questions about the new-look AVP

HERMOSA BEACH, California — The 2024 AVP schedule was not intended to be announced as it was last week:

Accidentally posted on their own website and shared by a slew of fans and various beach volleyball groups on Facebook before it was taken down from the website. But the cat was out of the bag, pandora out of its box, and, in a few hours, the schedule was back on the website.

Not the intended launch, no, but, intent notwithstanding, that is, for better or worse, what happened, which is exactly how the Sand Wannabes, an Austin-based beach volleyball crew, put it when they became one of the earlier groups to share the post on social media.

“It’s here,” the moderator wrote, “for better or worse.”

Here, then, is the final schedule:

A limited, six-stop season that is considered by most to be a three-stop season, with major events, renamed “Heritage Series,” in Huntington Beach (May 17-19), Manhattan Beach (August 16-18), and Chicago (August 30-September 1), with minor, qualifying events, now called Contenders, in Denver (July 6-7), Waupaca (July 13-14), and Virginia Beach (August 3-4). Those six events precede the onset of the new AVP League, an eight-week duel-style format which remains a touch vague, as details are still coming. With many details still to come, we received no shortage of questions about the AVP, the 2024 beach volleyball season, and our thoughts on it for this week’s episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. We did the best we could to answer the questions with what limited information we have, and are privy to share.

Biggest AVP Tour snubs? League snubs?

Before we get to any snubs, I want to acknowledge what I believe the AVP got right. It kept Huntington Beach, long one of the Tour’s most popular stops, on the schedule, as well as Chicago, which has a deep and rich history, as well as one of the best crowds in the country — easily the best outside Southern California. The Atlanta-based fans will no doubt feel snubbed, but until Atlanta is able to get the crowds of a Huntington, Manhattan, or Chicago, they can’t reasonably argue that the AVP should have returned to an expensive venue that was rarely more than half full.

Snubbed, to me, is Hermosa Beach, which I — a Hermosa resident, for transparency’s sake — put as the current leader for greatest beach volleyball town in the world. There are no beach volleyball fans like…