One seeds dominate Huntington; Brazil goes full Brazil in Brazil

Good morning Beach Volleyball Fans,

And happy … Monday? Yes, we’ve moved the Beach Volleyball Digest to Monday, at the behest of Tom Feuer, who properly assessed that if we were to run our weekly roundup on Mondays, we’d have a whole lot more to include.

And boy, do we.

This weekend was a wild one, with Brazil going full Brazil in Brazil, Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng snatching souls in the debut of their reunion tour in Huntington Beach, and the Taylors looking very much like the team we expected them to be when they partnered up earlier this year.

Before we head out of the country, we’ll start local, at Beach Blvd. in Huntington Beach.

All bow down to the No. 1 seeds

This past weekend, the AVP returned to Huntington Beach — one of my favorite stops on Tour, and one of the more underrated beaches out there — for the first time since 2019. Once the annual season-opening event, it’s been put on the bench due, according to the AVP, to COVID reasons. It was fantastic to have professional beach volleyball back in Huntington, and it was especially fantastic to have it back in Huntington if you were the one seed.

Those were Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, back together again for the first time since 2017, and Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander. Cheng and Hughes, who are considered by us at SANDCAST as the top American prospective team to qualify for the Paris Olympics, looked even better than the hype machine touted them to be, which was considerable.

They didn’t just beat teams; they snatched their souls and tossed them into the Pacific. Only two of the 10 sets they played this weekend came closer than 21-15, and the final set of the weekend, against Katie Horton and Brook Bauer, was 21-7. A fitting finale to a dominant debut for the Cheng and Hughes (insert new team name here).

Crabb and Sander, meanwhile, put on a demolition derby of their own, dropping just a single set, to Logan Webber and Seain Cook, en route to their second straight AVP win. They polished off Avery Drost and Chase Frishman in the finals, 21-17, 21-14.

Other notes from AVP Huntington Beach

• Molly Turner picks up a new partner … and keeps on winning. In her debut with Kaitlyn Malaney, Turner has now played with five different partners this season — Jessica Gaffney, Maddie Anderson, Torrey Van Winden, Carly Skjodt —…