Trevor Crabb makes good on guaranteed win at AVP Fort Lauderdale

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — He couldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

He shouldn’t.

He did.

Thought Trevor Crabb couldn’t get any bolder, any louder, any brasher than he has been in the past? Thought his run-in with Reid Priddy, his guaranteed win at the Porsche Cup, another guarantee in Manhattan, had quieted him down? Sated his diet for self-induced pressure?

Think again.

Less than a week before AVP Fort Lauderdale, Crabb declared to the world, via Instagram, that he and Tri Bourne would leave Florida with “nothing but first place. Slap a guarantee on dat ass.”

How bold was this one? Just days prior to his social media proclamation, Bourne and Crabb bowed out in ninth in a Volleyball World Challenger event in Espinho, Portugal, losing an ugly, lopsided match to Italians Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi, 21-16, 21-13. That match wasn’t an exception, but more the norm for this season, a proxy for how the past four months have gone in 2022. It has been a year that hasn’t included a single quarterfinal in six events the World Tour, results that have sent their ranking plummeting from the top 10 down to 30. 

There was, really, little tangible handhold for Crabb to latch onto for this guarantee. He and Bourne had, as Bourne has readily admitted, “a crap year” prior to this weekend.

Meanwhile, their biggest rivals on the AVP, Chaim Schalk and Theo Brunner? They were the hottest team in the country, finishing fourth at the World Championships and following it up with a win in Hermosa Beach — a victory made possible by a sweep over Bourne and Crabb in the seventh-place match. Schalk then followed that up with a gold at the Vancouver Open with Troy Field, ballooning his prize winnings to $26,000 in a matter of three tournaments.

And the coldest team in the United States, the one many expected — wanted — to break up in the near future, was guaranteeing a victory?

And they were saying it out loud?

“It’s just that feeing when you know you’re going to win,” Crabb said. “Honestly, before the tournament started, it was already over.”

He’s not one to mince words, Crabb. And, true to his words, unbelievably, impossibly, somewhat hilariously, he backed it up yet again, winning his third AVP tournament on his third guaranteed victory, as he and Bourne swept Schalk and Brunner in the finals, 23-21, 21-14, winning every set in Fort Lauderdale en route to their…