SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter

This past December was a wild one for USA Volleyball on the men's side. Tri Bourne dumped Trevor Crabb to pick up Chaim Schalk, and Theo Brunner then picked up Trevor Crabb. Chase Budinger scooped Miles Evans, while Miles Partain and Andy Benesh confirmed their partnership, and Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander stuck together. Eleven months later, were the partnership changes a good move? With three...

Tri Bourne made a landscape-altering decision this winter, dumping Trevor Crabb and picking up Chaim Schalk instead. The results thus far haven't backed up that decision, and our semi-monthly mailbag on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball With Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter was chock full of questions about that decision. So our episode today put Bourne on the hot seat, answering the question: Does he reg...

DJ Klasnic is arguably the best Serbian beach volleyball player ever – the first to win a medal (in 2017 with Lazar Kolaric) and then the first to win a gold medal (in 2022 with Kolaric). Now, after six years of trying, Klasnic is alas competing on the AVP Tour. What a rookie season he had: six AVP main draws, a seventh in New Orleans, ninth in Huntington and Chicago, with a win over Taylor Crabb...

Steve Obradovich is reviving fours beach volleyball in the United States with the Newport Beach Volleyball Invitational on October 21st. It features a star-studded field of both players and sponsors alike, with the teams being: Taylor Crabb, Taylor Sander, Nick Lucena and Alex Ranghieri; Sean Rosenthal, Jake Gibb, Miles Partain, and Andy Benesh Troy Field, Casey Patterson, Chase Frishman, and Bren...

Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes are the 2023 Beach Volleyball World Champions! Becoming the first @USAVolleyball team to win a World Championship gold medal since April Ross and Jen Kessy did so in 2009. Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth added a bronze medal to the slate, becoming the first American team to win a World Championship bronze medal since Liz Masakayan and Elaine Youngs in 1999 -- which was als...

Hailey Harward is one of the brightest young talents making her rise up both the AVP and Volleyball World rankings. A year after winning her first AVP as a rookie in Fort Lauderdale, Harward bumped her average finish on Tour to nearly a fifth, tripled her international prize money, increased her AVP prize money by 38% and, oh yes, got picked up by Alix Klineman and scooped a wild card into the Bea...

The Beach Volleyball World Championships have arrived, and we are halfway through, with six  @USAVolleyball  teams winning their pool: Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft, Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, and Miles Partain and Andy Benesh. But as anyone knows: The real tournament begins Wednesday, where it's single el...

Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes are one of the best teams in the world, currently ranked No. 4 in the Olympic race, with a gold medal in Tepic, silver in Gstaad, and two AVP wins in 2023. They’re also coached by Kelly’s husband, Jordan, which has created, as you might be able to guess, an interesting dynamic, one that is both a dream and also extremely difficult. It’s working, both on the court – they...

Welcome back to the Road To Paris, where Travis Mewhirter breaks down the race to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France. On this episode, Mewhirter breaks down the most recent  @volleyballworld  Elite16 in Paris, less than a year from the Olympics, which will be hosted right down the street from Roland Garros. We chat about: - The growing dominance of Ana Patricia and Duda, who have now won as m...

Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece have built one of the most extraordinary communities in the world, as top performers in virtually all industries, from the NFL and NBA to Hollywood A-Listers to MMA, big wave surfers, and everyone in between – including volleyball – gravitate towards their home for workouts, good conversation, and downright decadent coffee. Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter took a trip...

Jon Alvarez is the founder and CEO of Volleyball Life, the leading tournament software in all of beach volleyball, running more than 3,000 events in 2023 alone – a 70 percent increase from 2022. But Volleyball Life is more than that – much more. It’s one of the top resources for college coaches to scout juniors, as it has an extensive database of nearly every junior player in the country, his or h...

Trevor Crabb has won more AVP tournaments than any player in the last five years. And yet…people still bet against him. And people are still being proven wrong. Crabb made good on his $500 wager that he’d beat Andy Benesh and Miles Partain the next time he and Theo Brunner played them. That next time came in the finals of AVP Chicago, which makes Crabb and Brunner tied for first in wins on the AVP...

The Nourse Twins – Audrey Nourse and Nicole Nourse – are three-time NCAA Champions as starters as USC, something no other women’s program has ever done at Southern Cal. Now, as fall season gets underway, they’re looking for an unprecedented fourth consecutive National Championship. We chatted all about their success as USC, as well as: Why they decided to flip their commitment from Stanford to USC...

The field for the 2023 Beach Pro Tour World Championships has been set! With Wednesday’s drawing of the lots, all 48 teams per gender have been placed into their respective pools. There are some good draws, some bad draws – and huge opportunities all around. On this episode of The Road to Paris, Travis Mewhirter breaks down the World Championships field, including: Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk gett...

Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander are, alas, Manhattan Beach Open champions. The world feels right, properly balanced, with Taylor Crabb on the Pier. As for Sander? It took the guy just two shots – two! – to get his name on the Pier. That’s insane. We chat all about their win at the Manhattan Beach Open, as well as a number of other topics y’all are going to love, including: Why Sander thought they h...

Andy Benesh is the most improved beach volleyball player in the world in 2023. Entering this season with Miles Partain, Benesh was seeded third in the qualifier of a Challenge. Now? He and Partain are the No. 1 ranked team in the United States, and No. 3 in the world. His climb has been extraordinary, and exactly what USA Volleyball needed after the retirements of Jake Gibb and Phil Dalhausser. On...

This episode of the Road to Paris follows the Hamburg Elite16, an event in which every single men’s medalist – Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Sam Cottafava, Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum – has added the jump-set to their offense, not to mention fifth-place finishers and master jump-setters Miles Partain and Andy Benesh. The women’s side is a touch dif...

What’s up with the AVP’s streaming? Is Alix Klineman making a run at the Olympics? Are Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes on a slump? (if so, I’d like to slump like them). Can ANYONE stop Miles Partain and Andy Benesh? These are but a small sampling of the questions we tackled on this week’s SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball With Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, as well as Savvy Simo. AVP Atlanta seemed to be a...

Out of System Volleyball is one of the fastest-rising, most viral digital media brands in the volleyball space. Joe Worsley and Gage Worsley charged onto the volleyball media scene in style, winning the 2020 Waupaca Boatride two weeks after launching Out of System – and just hours after learning how autofocus worked on their cameras. Since, they’ve exploded, adding all-world setter Micah Ma’a to t...

Brooke Niles is the longtime beach volleyball coach at Florida State University, heading into her ninth year at the helm. She’s also one of the most successful coaches in NCAA Beach Volleyball history, taking the Seminoles to the NCAA Championship every single year it has existed, something no coach in the country can claim. She’s helped produce professionals such as AVP champions in Jace Pardon,...

Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson should be crowned the real queens of Canada after their GOLD MEDAL at home in the Montreal Elite16. They were phenomenal all weekend long, surviving one three-setter after another – against Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Xinyi Xia and Chen Xue, Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles – to win their second gold of the season. On this epi...

JD Hamilton has had one of the most extraordinary journeys onto the AVP Tour of anyone who has qualified in recent memory. Long one of the nation’s top grassroots players, winning every kind of tournament in any sort of format in any state or city or town you can imagine, one major feat eluded Hamilton: Qualifying on the AVP Tour. In Virginia Beach with Travis Mewhirter, he alas did it, qualifying...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Chase Frishman. Long one of the most exciting defenders on the AVP Tour – and he won the 2016 AVP Rookie of the Year – Frishman has found a bigger, more purposeful use for his talents with the founding of Flight School Volleyball, a series of camps and clinics around the USA, from Idaho to Pennsylvania to Mon...

This is a special edition of the Road to Paris, where Travis Mewhirter breaks down the Olympic beach volleyball race to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Mewhirter is in Ketchikan, Alaska with the Knudsen fam, catching salmon and eating nothing but salmon. He made a deal with himself: He’d only do a Road to Paris if an American team won a gold medal at the Volleyball World Espinho Challenge…which is e...

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Scott Davenport, the man who is arguably the most sought-out beach volleyball coach in America. Since stopping playing on the AVP Tour around 2006, Davenport has built a lengthy list of athletes on his roster, including Nick Lucena, Matt Fuerbringer, Casey Patterson, Theo Brunner, Chaim Schalk, Emily Stockman...