To some, maybe it seemed an odd choice. In the wake of Jake Gibb’s retirement following the 2021 season, here was Taylor Crabb, the hottest free agent on the beach volleyball market. Could have had any American blocker he wanted. Yet, months earlier, he had hinted that his next partner might take some people by surprise, that it wouldn’t be the all-Hawai’ian team many expected, with Crabb and Tri Bourne.
Who, then, could it be?
Oh, just a guy who hadn’t played a competitive beach volleyball match since he was 20. Taylor Crabb would be writing his next AVP and Olympic chapter with Taylor Sander.
What an ending to their first season they just wrote.
In front of nearly 7,000 fans at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday evening, Crabb and Sander won their first event, in what is arguably the second-biggest tournament of the season, claiming the AVP Phoenix Gold Series Championships, beating Miles Partain and Paul Lotman 21-17, 17-21, 15-13 in the finals.
How good was Sander, in just the 12th tournament of his professional career? He killed 11 of 13 attempts, leading all players with a .769 hitting percentage. In a match where Lotman and Partain led in every team category save for one — serving — it was Sander’s four aces — with an untold number of serves that put Lotman and Partain out of system, taking the claws out of an option-heavy offense — that proved the difference in a match decided by two points.
“I don’t even think I needed to be on the court,” Crabb said afterwards. “That guy did f****** everything.”
He did, of course, need to be there. Not least of all because if Crabb doesn’t give Sander the call, is Sander on the AVP at all right now? Or is he still collecting massive checks, deploying that massive right arm indoors, making another Olympic run with the U.S. National Team?
“Taylor’s one of the best players in the world,” Sander said. “I’m lucky to call him my partner. It’s so fun to play with him. Without him, we wouldn’t be here, first place.”
So without Crabb, then, the AVP, and its fans, would be without the 6-foot-5 30-year-old who just finished his first season on the beach ranked seventh in hitting percentage (.470), fifth in blocks (88), passed with a .932 efficiency, and first in aces (75), winning that category by a full 15 over Jeremy Casebeer.
“I grew up with this guy since we were 14, 15 years old,” Crabb said. “I knew what I was going to…
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