HERMOSA BEACH, Calif — It is both the off-season and it is not. The AVP Phoenix Championships — a fantastic event, by all accounts — came and went in a thrilling weekend over the waning days of summer. And yet, in an odd scheduling scramble, there remain two more tournaments in this AVP season: The Huntington Beach Tour Series in November, and the Central Florida Pro Series in early December.
Beach volleyball in December? Outside?
Such is the result — a fine one, in my eyes — of an audacious schedule with the most events the majority of players on the AVP Tour have ever seen. Internationally, too, the season stretches on, all the way until mid-January, for the World Tour Finals, held in Doha, and its Scrooge McDuck-sized pile of prize money: $150,000 to the victors.
On our semi-monthly fan question episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, we covered all of those elements of this sport — the quasi off-season, the AVP’s year, why Bourne and Trevor Crabb (and all American men, it seems) have shut it down internationally for the year, and, of course, a limited look ahead at what’s to come when Olympic qualifying begins in a few months.
Below is just a sampling of what we chatted about on the podcast, joined, as always, by Savvy Simo.
Jukebox Hero: Projections on new Olympic pairings
Joe Meserve: Who will Zana Muno most likely make an Olympic run with?
Slate Volley: Who is the future of beach volleyball and possible teams coming up?
Black Mamba Beto: How nervous is Tri with Miles Partain teaming with Andy Benesh?
Brik G: Suspected team mix-ups for the next season and Olympic qualification period?
Every time we open up the mailbag for new submissions, we are flooded with a variety of the same question, just from different people: What are the Olympic partnerships for Paris going to be?
And, every month, the answer remains the same: No moves will be made until two women by the names of April Ross and Alix Klineman decide, publicly, what they’re going to do.
There’s four realistic options on the table:
- They can both retire
- They can return and play together
- One retires while the other plays
- Both play with different partners.
Options one and two result in virtually the same answer: Teams remain mostly the same, only the race either does or does not include the defending Olympic gold medalists.
Unless either Ross or…
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