ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey — The procession of players on Sunday morning at the AVP Tour Series stop in Atlantic City was a walking, limping, dragging advertisement for Tuff Socks. Amy Ozee, a 23-year-old from Hawai’i who had played six matches with Mariah Whalen by that point, was even caught hopping on more than one occasion. Mary Lorenz and Jeff Samuels? They worked their way off the sand late Saturday night on their knees.
Even those who wore some sort of layer on their feet — the AVP, it should be noted, advised the players to bring sand socks — were left blistered and cut, battle wounds of a combination of heat that broached triple digits, sand temperature that went well north of that, and needling shells. It made Sunday’s seventh-place rounds through the finals as much a battle of attrition as it was winning: Who could push their bloodied and gnarled feet, their depleted and dehydrated muscles, the hardest?
It is no coincidence, then, that the two victors in Atlantic City — David Lee and Cody Caldwell, and Larissa and Lili Maestrini — took the quickest routs there. Neither team lost a match, and therefore took the most expedient path to the finals, limiting their matches to six and five apiece, respectively.
Had the 40-year-old Lee, a three-time USA indoors Olympian, and 29-year-old Caldwell lost earlier? Had they dropped their third match of the day on Saturday, a an hour-long, back-and-forth slugfest with Logan Webber and Seain Cook that would have required them to play a fourth that evening? Lee isn’t so sure they’d have been able to play. Both felt the familiar twinges of cramps snaking up their legs — calves, hamstrings, quads. They knew it was invaluable the moment they sealed up the 14-21, 21-13, 15-13 win over Webber and Cook.
There was just no way they could have known it would have been the harbinger to the first AVP titles of their careers.
Three matches later, all played on Sunday, Caldwell and Lee stood, caked in the brown sugar sand of Atlantic City, the only team remaining, having defeated Avery Drost and Chase Frishman in the finals, 21-15, 21-18.
“I’ve put in a lot of time and a lot of effort and it just all seems to be coming together on the court,” said Caldwell, who had been blocking for the entirety of the season for Adam Roberts before switching to defense to play with Lee.
“They call…
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