HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — After two windy and wet and positively wild, in all of the best ways, AVP tournaments to begin the season, professional beach volleyball is coming home to Southern California this weekend. The AVP is back in Huntington Beach for the first time since 2019, unless you count last fall’s Tour Series, a watered-down event that was held a few miles south of the actual Huntington Beach Pier.
There is positively nothing watered down about this event. It’s back at the Pier, one of the best locations on Tour, and the field is beyond full. This weekend will feature potentially the thickest field of the season, with no Volleyball World conflicts pulling athletes away. Quite the opposite has happened, in fact: International players either with visas or in the process of attaining them, have made an already-full field even fuller.
It has made for an event rife with storylines.
“Bemvindo” Alison, and welcome to the AVP, Sam Schachter
Yes, you read it correct that the No. 4 seed in Thursday’s qualifier is Alison Cerutti, he of three Olympic appearances, two Olympic medals — silver in 2012, gold in 2016 — and 28 gold medals on the FIVB. If he were the four seed in the main draw, it might seem low. But the qualifier? He might be the most decorated man in an AVP qualifier (Larissa’s bona fides still outrank him, and she’s still in the qualifier; more on her below). No wild card was given — kind of surprising, kind of not — to Alison, so he and Eric Beranek, back after a lengthy absence due to injury and illness, will need to win three matches on Thursday to advance into the main draw.
Such is the path required by my international partner, Sam Schachter, and me. Schachter, Canada’s top defender, is making his AVP debut this weekend. His only professional appearances in the United States have gone well enough, with four wins in five attempts on the National Volleyball League with Josh Binstock.
No pressure.
AVP champions decorate qualifier field
Aside from the cadre of international players jumping into the qualifier, there is no shortage of American talent buried in there as well. Jen Keddy and Carly Kan won an AVP as recently as December, yet here we are, six months later, and both are in the qualifier — Keddy with Kaitlyn Malaney, Kan with Jess Gaffney. Down the entry list is
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