VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The last time Logan Webber competed in Virginia Beach, he punted a ball and promptly earned a red card. This gifted the opposing team a point and, as it turned out, the match.
He did not do that this year.
On a hot and breezy East Coast Sunday afternoon, Webber and Hagen Smith won the AVP Virginia Beach Tour Series, upsetting top-seeded Billy Allen and Alison Cerutti 21-13, 22-20. And that they got to the final was accomplishment enough.
Webber and Smith barely made it out of pool.
Competing in their first tournament as a team, Webber and Smith, who entered Virginia Beach seeded second overall, were stunned by qualifiers John Schwengel and Dave Wieczorek (18-21, 21-18, 7-15). With the Tour Series format flipping to modified pool play this year, as opposed to the double-elimination format of 2022, Smith and Webber needed to beat Adam Roberts and Wyatt Harrison in the second round just to break pool, which would then put them in an uphill position in playoffs.
No matter. They swept every opponent thereafter, stumping Canada’s Jake MacNeil and Alex Russell in the first round (21-15, 21-19), Bryce Mayer and Brian Miller in the quarterfinals (21-17, 21-16), JD Hamilton and me in the semifinals (21-18, 21-18, though I believe the reported scores are wrong; by my memory it was 21-14, 21-19), and Allen and Cerutti in the finals.
Webber is no stranger to winning events of this magnitude.
In 2021, he and Evan Cory went on a tear, winning AVPNext Golds — the rough equivalent of a Tour Series before the advent of the Tour Series — in New Orleans, Waupaca and Seaside. He won the Laguna Beach Open, which has since been promoted to a Tour Series, with Seain Cook and they followed it up a few months later with a win at the Panama City Beach AVPNext Gold. But with a sluggish start to the year — three misses on international qualifiers and a 13th in Huntington Beach — Cory moved on to partner with Troy Field. Webber subsequently picked up Smith, who had been partnered with Bill Kolinske, one of a number of partnership dominoes on the men’s side.
The move seems to have worked out OK for all.
It’s the first tournament win for Smith in a little more than a year, the last being a CBVA with Jake Dietrich in April of 2022. And the win assures them, and three others, a spot in the main draw of the Hermosa Beach Pro Series.
Before Virginia…
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