Professional Seashore
December 20, 2023
HERMOSA BEACH, California — The 2023 seaside volleyball season was so long as any in latest reminiscence, one which started in Doha, Qatar in January and ended again in Doha just some weeks in the past for the Seashore Professional Tour Finals. It criss-crossed continents and hit each new cities and previous. New hierarchies had been established, new pairs shaped. Some labored. Many didn’t.
And but, regardless of the wealth of data and knowledge accrued from such a prolonged season, the top of the yr left us with extra questions than solutions, significantly with a brand new AVP system that has many — together with most each participant — questioning what could be in retailer for 2024.
Tri Bourne and I did our greatest to reply as many as we may in our closing mailbag episode of SANDCAST.
What are your Paris 2024 predictions?
By predictions, we’re assuming our epically joyous pal is referring to who will likely be on the rostrum on the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games. First, a caveat: The Olympics generally is a crapshoot of a draw. Take 2016 for instance, when the highest two groups on the earth had been Alison and Bruno and Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena. In an unlucky accident and terrible luck, they met within the quarterfinals in what I nonetheless view because the de facto gold medal match. Lucena and Dalhausser misplaced (14-21, 21-12, 15-9), and Bruno and Alison wound up successful gold.
Within the case of the Paris Olympics, nonetheless, let’s say the brackets work out completely, just like how the 2023 World Championship bracket did, with Ana Patricia and Duda, Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy — 4 of the highest 5 seeds — all capable of make it to the semifinals with just one minor upset required. Even that upset was simply the 5 beating the 4.
Ought to the universe conspire in such a way, I’ve Ana Patricia and Duda taking gold, Kloth and Nuss silver, and Cheng and Hughes bronze, beating both Australia, Germany’s Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller, or Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson within the quarterfinals. Why Ana Patricia and Duda? They’re the most effective staff on the earth, with 9 medals in 11 occasions, and so they didn’t win gold in each of the 2023 season’s greatest occasions, settling for silver at World Champs and bronze on the Seashore Professional Tour Finals.
You possibly can solely hold them from gold for therefore lengthy.
As for the lads, I’m sticking to my weapons with the younger Swedes, David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig. I had them successful World Champs this yr, and so they practically did it, falling simply shy of a Czech Republic staff who continues to make a case for probably the most underrated groups of all-time. As a seaside volleyball fan, I’m hoping we get a Sweden vs. Norway gold medal match, one thing we noticed 3 times in 2023, together with the Seashore Professional Tour Finals, which Sweden gained, as they did in Tepic earlier this yr. I’d predict the identical in Paris.
For bronze, I’m using with Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner, the pair voted Workforce of the 12 months, with three gold medals, together with the large breakthrough win on the World Championships. Hopefully, the bracket works out in such a method, although it may additionally go the best way of World Champs, the place the Czechs performed Norway in an unlucky quarterfinal draw.
For the game’s sake, let’s hope we get a closing that includes two of these three aforementioned groups and, for the USA’s sake, that Andy Benesh and Miles Partain can proceed their scintillating 2023 run into an Olympic medal match.
When will the Russians be allowed to compete on the Seashore Professional Tour once more?
That is such an intriguing query, because the IOC simply introduced that Russian and Belarusian athletes will be capable to compete on the Paris Olympic Video games. The choice got here a lot sooner than anticipated, by greater than three months. However the IOC additionally supplied every sport’s governing physique — the FIVB, within the case of seaside volleyball — autonomy over how they need to run their sport. Gymnastics, for instance, has allowed Russians to compete, and they’ll accomplish that in blue uniforms. No phrase has but been given from Volleyball World or the FIVB, however we may probably see Olympic silver medalists Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy and their equally proficient countrymen Konstantin Semenov and Ilya Leshukov again on the Seashore Professional Tour as early as this March, when the 2024 season begins in Doha.
Sadly for the Russians — amongst many unlucky occasions for athletes who’ve been punished for the actions of their authorities — there gained’t be sufficient occasions on the calendar to hit the requisite 12 to be able to qualify for the Olympic Video games. Ought to they be allowed to compete, their solely path to Paris will likely be by means of the Continental Cup. It could be an interesting wrinkle to throw into an already-stacked European Continental Cup, making for must-watch tv.
What’s going on with the AVP Tour subsequent season?
Additional information on new AVP format?
What do you guys assume would be the positives and negatives of the AVP format?
Your ideas on the just lately introduced AVP League?
These are only a small sampling of the questions that dominated this mailbag. Nicely greater than half of our 100-plus questions had been centered across the AVP, its new possession, new format, new every little thing. The straightforward reply is that this:
We don’t know.
No person does, most likely not even the oldsters now charged with turning across the perpetually sinking ship that’s the AVP.
As for what we expect, Riley McKibbin dropped a quote on a just lately recorded podcast that has caught with me: “Should you do what you’ve at all times finished, you’ll get what you’ve at all times gotten.”
Since 2012, the AVP has principally finished the identical factor: Host occasions across the nation, construct costly stadiums at most venues, hope the variety of eyeballs and followers attracted can command sufficiently big costs for sponsors and advertisers to make the numbers work out, do it once more.
It hasn’t labored out. Not in a very long time. The losses incurred on an annual foundation accrue to no trivial sum. The way in which the AVP has been functioning just about since 1994 has been, as proof would counsel, unsustainable, even within the 2000s, when the highest gamers had been eclipsing six figures in prize cash. There has, thus, been an extended line of householders and people working the Tour with various levels of success, from Leonard Armato to Donald Solar to Bally’s to, now, a shared construction wherein Bally’s continues to be a minority stakeholder.
For longer than lots of the gamers have been alive, the AVP has finished what it’s at all times finished, and acquired what it’s at all times gotten, which is a puddle of crimson on the underside line.
In order that they’re altering. Attempting an eight-team league of kinds and limiting the variety of conventional tournaments. I’d think about these tournaments will likely be watered down, with smaller attracts, restricted bills and a minimal stadium setup, if there’s one in any respect.
The historical past of upstart sports activities leagues would counsel it’ll fail. Sports activities, like most companies, are a graveyard of a whole bunch of failed makes an attempt, and what’s left are the behemoths that survived: The NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and Premier League, amongst few others. Even these monsters all confronted existential crises comparatively just lately, simply because the PGA Tour is now with the rise of LIV. The AVP was truly one thing of a behemoth as soon as, commanding greater tv audiences than MLB on nights wherein they competed.
These days have been lengthy gone.
What’s going to come of this new AVP? Who is aware of? May very well be good. May very well be dangerous. May very well be the change this sport wants or it may fall into the wastebasket of dangerous concepts.
I’d think about the panorama will resemble one thing that appears very like the 2021 season, wherein the AVP placed on three occasions and the landmark grassroots tournaments — Seaside, Waupaca, Motherlode, Pottstown — swelled consequently, turning into a haven of the middle-tier participant.
The league will, on the very least, be fascinating to see the way it works and performs out. Competing with the NFL, MLB playoffs, NCAA indoor, and NBA for fall eyeballs actually gained’t be straightforward, particularly for the reason that groups are comprised of simply two pairs. I’d be extra shocked than not if the league stays a fall season and doesn’t transfer into the spring in future years, the place fewer sports activities are demanding the eye of viewers. However, once more, no one actually is aware of. The brand new people have been deliberately obscure about every little thing, as lots of the particulars are possible nonetheless being labored out.
I’ve taken a view akin to that of the parable of the Chinese language farmer. Should you’re unfamiliar with it, I’ve pasted it beneath.
“As soon as upon a time there was a Chinese language farmer whose horse ran away. That night, all of his neighbors got here round to commiserate. They stated, ‘We’re so sorry to listen to your horse has run away. That is most unlucky.’ The farmer stated, ‘Possibly.’ The subsequent day the horse got here again bringing seven wild horses with it, and within the night all people got here again and stated, ‘Oh, isn’t that fortunate. What a terrific flip of occasions. You now have eight horses!’ The farmer once more stated, ‘Possibly.’
The next day his son tried to interrupt one of many horses, and whereas using it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then stated, ‘Oh expensive, that’s too dangerous,’ and the farmer responded, ‘Possibly.’ The subsequent day the conscription officers got here round to conscript individuals into the military, and so they rejected his son as a result of he had a damaged leg. Once more all of the neighbors got here round and stated, ‘Isn’t that nice!’ Once more, he stated, ‘Possibly.’”