SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is SUCH A BLAST! On the show this week is Latvian legend Aleksandrs Samoilovs, known to most as the Lion King. A veteran on the World Tour for 16 years now, Samoilovs has achieved more than anyone could have ever imagined, hailing from a tiny country the size of Idaho: three Olympic Games, No. 1 ranking in the world,...

This episode of SANDCAST features the new-look Canadian team of Sam Schachter – an Olympian at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games – and Dan Dearing. This team is going to be FREAKY athletic – and also one that’s a bit of a surprise to many. Schachter considered retiring after falling short of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games; Dearing was literally retired for seven years. Now they’re back. And we chatted all...

This episode of SANDCAST features, for the first time in a while, a fellow writer! Coming on to chat is longtime AVP player-turned-AVP staff writer Kim Smith. For four years, Smith was a solid presence on the AVP Tour, making six top-10s, competing alongside Olympians and promising up-and-coming talent alike. But when the pandemic hit, and she found herself two spots out of the AVP Champions Cup,...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is, without a doubt, our most hilarious one to date. It’s not just SANDCAST, this time, but a combination of our usual podcast and Drinking Whiskey with the Crabbs, as Taylor Crabb and Trevor Crabb brought on a 10-year bottle of Widow Jane. It wasn’t just shared but us, either, but also Nick Lucena, who was in town, a...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Nick Lucena, one of the most humble, genuine, fun people in the sport of beach volleyball. As any conversation with Lucena is, this one was an absolute blast – funny, introspective, humble. On this episode, we chat about: How Lucena intended to retire a decade ago, and why he’s still playing now How he had gi...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features our always-popular Fan Question mailbag episode, hosted, as always, by the wonderful Savvy Simo. We had A LOT to talk about this week, including: Why we LOVE the AVP schedule Why the barrier to entry to the main draw getting higher is a good thing, for both qualifier and main draw players alike Who our surpri...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Emily Stockman, one of the best defenders in the world – and one who isn’t finished playing beach volleyball just yet. After a torrid run up the FIVB rankings in 2018, Stockman and Kelley Kolinske would finish the Tokyo Olympic qualification process ranked 10th in the world – and just out of qualifying for th...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features the hottest team from 2021 on the AVP Tour, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth. What a tear they were on in 2021. They finished the NCAA season with LSU undefeated, a considerable accomplishment considering their opponents on court one. Then they won the first AVP they played in as a team, claiming gold in Atlanta,...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter features a wide-ranging look-ahead at what's to come in the 2022 beach volleyball season. We have new tours, with the AVP being bought by Bally's, and Volleyball World replacing the FIVB. We have new partnerships, on both the men's and women's side. The hosts have new goals. New mindsets. It's new everything in 2022. O...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features UCLA rising star – well, she already is kind of a star – Devon Newberry. Just a sophomore at UCLA, Newberry is already a regular in AVP main draws, having made back-to-back main draws as a 17-year-old with good friend and teammate Lindsey Sparks, becoming the first U-18 team to make consecutive main draws in...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features USC standout Hailey Harward. In her lone full season with the Trojans – Harward previously played for Long Beach State – she won a National Championship, and is returning to the lineup as a heavy favorite to do so again. In fact, it was Harward and her partner, Haley Hallgren, who provided the NCAA Championsh...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Zana Muno one of the brightest young talents on the AVP and one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet. In just three seasons on the AVP, Muno has finished third three times – twice with Crissy jones, once with Kelley Kolinske – won a gold medal on the FIVB Tour, and throughout it all, she’s raising chickens!...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features one of the most beloved players on the AVP Tour, and in all of beach volleyball: Ed Ratledge. At 45 years old, Ratledge has been playing professionally for more than half of his life. A vault of knowledge, and one of the most interesting and well-spoken people on Tour, our conversation was a wide-ranging one....

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is so dang epic. We brought on Gabby Reece, one of the most influential voices in women’s sport of this past generation, and one of the coolest people on the planet (seriously, just listen). Reece is one of the best players of all-time at Florida State, an author, host of her own podcast, co-founder of Laird Superfood...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. We brought in Finn Taylor, the new CEO at Volleyball World, and we chatted all things volleyball. If you’re wondering what the new world International Volleyball will look like, and how Taylor plans on finally capitalizing on the massive untapped market of beach volleyball, this is an absolute mu...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features probably our most-asked-for guest of the 2021 year: Indoor sensation, and new beach convert, Taylor Sander. For the past decade or so, Sander has been one of the best outside hitters in the United States, a four-time All-American at BYU, Olympic bronze medalist in 2016, and a member of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is our monthly fan question episode, featuring our favorite former UCLA Bruin and up and coming AVP star, Savvy Simo.  Off-season is officially upon us, and most of the questions we answered are of the off-season variety: - Any partnership news on the AVP or Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour? - Can you break down Taylor...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Javier Bello and Joaquin Bello, the No. 1 beach volleyball team in England. The brothers, who are 21 years old and fraternal twins, are the back-to-back defending National Champions in England, who finished the season with two gold medals and a bronze. On this episode, we discuss: How a team from England even...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features one of the greatest road dogs in the game right now: Logan Webber. This past year, Webber enjoyed the finest season of his career, winning AVP Next Golds in New Orleans, Waupaca, and Seaside, made main draws in Manhattan Beach and Chicago, and finished the season with a victory at the Laguna Beach Open. On th...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features two-time USC National Champion and rising professional player Terese Cannon. Cannon’s journey is a unique one, even in a sport replete with unique journeys. Raised in Rochester, New York, Cannon played minimally on the beach growing up. But a weird freshman season indoors at Georgetown led her to reaching out...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features high-performance coach Alan Stein. If you're looking to improve at any area of your life -- beach volleyball, basketball, investing, parenting, ANYTHING -- this is a gold mine of information.  Stein, a former basketball teammate of Adam Roberts' at Elon University, is the author of the book, Raise Your Game ,...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is an ABSOLUTE GOLD MINE, featuring sport and high performance psychologist Michael Gervais.  Gervais is one of the most respected sports psychologists in the world, and has worked alongside athletes such as Felix Baumgartner -- who jumped out of a balloon and through the stratosphere -- to Pete Carroll and the Seattl...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, marks FOUR YEARS of the podcast! What began as an off-the-wall idea at a breakfast meeting at the Ocean Diner in Hermosa Beach has become my biggest storytelling passion, and, strangely, one of the points of Bourne’s beach volleyball career for which the Olympian and Manhattan Beach Open champ is now most well-known....

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features, for the first time, Riley McKibbin on his own. You guys, of course, know Riley McKibbin: He's the elder of the Beard Bros and the editor of the viral and wildly popular McKibbin YouTube channel, which is providing so, so, so much good for the beach volleyball world.  On this episode, we discuss: - The direct...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, is a re-run episode that we recorded back in August of 2018 with Jake Gibb. When we initially recorded this episode, Gibb was one day removed from the Manhattan Beach Open finals, where he and Taylor Crabb lost to Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena.  We figured now would be a great time to run it back, given that Gibb is...