SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter

Patricia Orozco knew Mike Dodd was serious the day he picked her up at UCLA in 1985. She knew he was serious because, after taking her to Marine Street for a crash course in beach volleyball, he took her to The Kettle for lunch in Manhattan Beach. “And it was like ‘Whoa!’ If you get taken to The Kettle for lunch then this he’s serious,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Tr...

The mailbag is back!  On the second SANDCAST mailbag, Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, alongside Podcast Mama Gabby Bourne, answer a wide variety of questions from you, the listeners. Before we get into the questions, a way to reach out to SANDCAST. If you have any questions, feedback, tips or suggestions, email us at sandcastpodcast@gmail.com .  Thanks to all who sent in questions for this week!...

One day. That’s it. That’s all Tim Bomgren and Taylor Crabb had for practice prior to AVP Austin. Crabb needed an emergency fill-in after Jake Gibb broke his toe. To the lefty from Minnesota he turned, despite never having played with Bomgren before, despite never having played with a lefty before. Not that any of this is unusual for Bomgren. He lives in Minnesota yet is one of the best blockers i...

Adam Johnson couldn’t believe it. He’d had some rough losses in his day, narrow losses with a lot on the line. Twice he had been the first team out of the Olympics, and twice it was because of a random, head-scratching injury. In 1996, when Johnson was partnered with Randy Stoklos in the Olympic trials in Baltimore, the two had to win just one of their next two matches, the first of which would co...

You guys asked – literally, you did ask questions, though not specifically for an entire episode of them – and SANDCAST is delivering. This is our first “mailbag” or “Sandbag” or whatever you’d like to call it. The premise, of course, is to answer your questions, about partnerships, about skill development, about stories, about where the game is headed, about whatever it is that you’re wondering a...

Lay out? Was that what Adam Roberts’ friends said? He didn’t even know what that meant. So you just walked down by the ocean, put a blanket down, and… laid there? Nope. Not Adam Roberts, this week’s guest on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. His whole life, then as it is now, had been based on movement. Raised in High Point, North Carolina, Roberts grew up on a stead...

They’re strategy was, simply, to dream on, because what else could they really do? Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen had no prior experience to call upon in the 2013 World Championships. The young Dutchmen had never made it further than the quarterfinals in an FIVB of any kind, let alone the biggest FIVB of the year. Yet there they were, in the semifinals against Germany’s Kay Matysik and Jona...

It would seem that Kelly Reeves and Brittany Howard have been playing together for years. At the very least, it would seem as if they’ve been close for quite some time. They smile constantly. Laugh even more. On more than one occasion on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, one finished the other’s sentence or filled in a blank. Little about their natural chemistry, whi...

To read through the old LA Times archives, to dig through all of the gushing, flattering pieces, is to remember Jose Loiola as a man of near mythical proportions, a beach volleyball Paul Bunyan. How hard he could hit! How high he could jump! How entertaining he was to watch! How loud and brash and charismatic he was! Loiola laughs at those memories. He laughs through a glass of wine, even though h...

Don’t let these Witts fool you, with their Colgate smiles and constant giggles and impossibly amiable personalities. Then again, how could you not be fooled? Was that McKenna in the Oakleys or Madison? Wasn’t McKenna on the right? Or did they switch? Hold on…it was Madison with the 4-centimeter tear in her ab…right? Or was that the other one, the one who looks just like her, down to the cascade of...

Stanford beach volleyball is, in one aspect at least, no different than any other athletic team in that every member has their role. Like, say, the player whose job it is to remind everyone of their inevitable mortality, and that all things should be taken in perspective. Or the one who brings in studies on the positive impact of placebo effects. Or the researcher who is studying the physiological...

A common issue being navigated by the vast majority of college beach volleyball coaches: “What tools did they have in their indoor game?” LSU coach Russell Brock said. "Being able to evaluate them on film or in person, to be able to say ‘You know what, this is the stuff that’s going to translate really well to our game, or these are the things that are going to limit our ability to be successful o...

The McKibbins are not all that different from any other set of siblings, if not a touch more hirsute and athletically inclined. They fight. They argue. They point out one another’s flaws, sometimes a bit gleefully. And they do this often. Often enough for Riley McKibbin to film a video blog detailing the frustrations of volleyball, and playing volleyball with your brother, and how to deal with the...

Troy Field was, in his own words, “terrified.” “Just so scared to mess up,” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “to, you know, disappoint this incredible athlete.” It helped, then, that the incredible athlete in question during last week’s Norceca qualifier was Reid Priddy, and few in volleyball understand what Field was going through more than Priddy. He’s...

Maddison McKibbin was finished. Finished with volleyball. Finished with being overseas. Finished with not being paid. Finished with the shady ownership of international volleyball teams. Finished with it all. He had played the game long enough, beginning at Hawaii’s famed Outrigger Canoe Club then onto Punahou School, where he became a three-time state champ, which preceded four years at USC, wher...

Sam Pedlow remembers the crying.   There he was, a full-fledged Canadian, playing hockey, his country’s past-time sport, the American equivalent of football, at a fairly high level, living up to the expectations of all of those around him. And then he abandoned it. He left a youth playoff hockey game for a volleyball practice. In some parts of Canada that might very well be considered treason.   “...

Fifth place? Had you told Theo Brunner, prior to the Fort Lauderdale Major this past weekend, that he’d take fifth place, in a field featuring every top beach volleyball team in the world, after being limited in training, admittedly a bit out of shape, with a new partner, after re-injuring his bad ankle and spraining his other... yeah, he’d have taken that. He was, as he said on SANDCAST: Beach Vo...

April is when the full-time volleyball begins. But the real battle annually begins in late January and early February, when Canadians Sam Schachter and Sam Pedlow stop by Hermosa Beach for a few weeks of high level training prior to FIVB Fort Lauderdale, the first major international event every year. The real battles, of course, do not take place on the courts themselves. Nah, they’re on Instagra...

It’s not a tour. That’s the first thing that Dave Mays, this week’s guest on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, wants you to know about p1440, of which he is a founding partner. It is many different things with many different meanings. Take, for example, the name itself. The 1440 is assured: It represents the 1,440 minutes we all have per day. But the p? Platform seem...

Contrary to popular belief, the first gold medal of the winter was not, in fact, won by 17-year-old snowboarder Red Gerard, who snatched the slopestyle gold medal in the 2018 Olympic Games from Canadian Max Parrot. The initial golds of the month were not even won in PyeongChang, but in Shepparton, Australia, on a beach, and not in the perversely intriguing snow volleyball, which is currently an ex...

Forget daggers. The look that Brittany Hochevar gave on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter could bore a hole straight through a human soul. The discussion had turned to partnership dynamics, and how it was with Hochevar and her partner, Emily Day. Day, it turns out, is the more organized one – there is always a more organized one – and I said something along the lines...

Perhaps you needed proof. Proof that Sara Hughes is, indeed, the one to fit the headline of this very podcast: That she is fit to become the next face of beach volleyball. Had you stopped by Huntington Beach last Friday morning, you’d have had all the proof you’d need. There, on court one, was Hughes, this week’s repeat guest on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, and...

On one of the walls in Sara Hughes’ bedroom is a poster of Misty May-Treanor. It’s been there since she was little, when Hughes began getting into volleyball, serving as a reminder of what she might become one day should she continue to pursue this beach volleyball dream of hers. So it struck her when, during a tournament this season, a parent of a young fan approached her and told Hughes that, on...

In this episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, we discuss SANDCAST host Tri Bourne's current health situation as he continues to wait patiently for the doctors to clear him to play again.   ‘Patience' is the word that continues to cross my mind as I keep my vision set on Tokyo 2020. We also dive into what it's like stepping away from the game of volleyball, bot...

If you didn’t get to the Hermosa Beach Pier early on July 22, you would have been too late. There would have been no seats left, nowhere for you to watch the first clash of the Crabbs, Taylor and Trevor, brothers and former partners turned, it seemed, bitter rivals. This wasn’t even the final – that would be a day later. This was the quarters, an oft-ignored round, one normally you’d sit and watch...