AVP Manhattan Beach Open: Where the Hawai’ians reign supreme

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — For about an hour on Thursday afternoon, Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb will be teammates one more time. They won’t be in board shorts, or even on the beach, but rather they’ll be together on the iconic Manhattan Beach Pier that overlooks it.

For the second straight year, they’ll smile for the cameras and celebrate with friends and family as a plaque with their names etched into it is placed onto the Pier, recognizing their 2022 Manhattan Beach Open victory.

They’re on different sides of the net for this weekend’s Manhattan Beach Open, which begins with Thursday’s qualifier — you can find the bracket for the qualifier here — and will end in a nationally televised final on Sunday on ESPN2. Yet in splitting, Bourne and Crabb have increased the likelihood of extending one of the more impressive streaks on the AVP Tour: A Hawai’ian competing in the finals of the Manhattan Beach Open.

For seven consecutive years, a Hawai’ian has made the finals of Manhattan. Bourne and John Hyden made back-to-back finals in 2015 and 2016, Trevor Crabb and Sean Rosenthal did so in 2017, and Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb in 2018.

It was Trevor, in 2019, who finally put his name on the Pier, in the most unlikely of partnerships, picking up a former rival in Reid Priddy while Bourne nursed a broken hand. Then it was Trevor again … and again — three straight Manhattan Beach Open wins for Trevor Crabb, and seven straight finals for the childhood friends who learned the game at the Outrigger Canoe Club. When dating it back to 2001 to include Stein Metzger, Kevin Wong, Mike Lambert, and Sean Scott, a Hawai’ian male has made 17 Manhattan Beach Open finals in the previous 23 tournaments.

If there were odds on such things, they would be heavily skewed towards another Hawai’ian either winning or competing for another title on Sunday afternoon. Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, winners of the Hermosa Beach Open, are the top seeds, followed by Bourne and Chaim Schalk. Taylor Crabb is fourth with Taylor Sander.

The Manhattan Beach Open has become less an question of whether or not a Hawai’ian will be on the Pier on 2023, but which one?

Challengers who could end the Hawai’ian reign

The team most likely to put an end to the Hawai’ian dominance in Manhattan is Chase Budinger and Miles Evans. They played arguably the best volleyball of their partnership in Atlanta, where they finished second and handed losses to both Taylor Crabb and Tri Bourne. Atlanta was no fluke, either: Budinger and Evans were tremendous the week prior, at the Montreal Elite16, where they qualified and finished ninth, dropping in an excellent match to Brazil’s Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano. Thrice this season, they’ve made a final — Miami, Saquarema, Brazil; Atlanta — and it shouldn’t come as a surprise if they do so again in Manhattan.

Aside from Budinger and Evans, only a handful of teams have displayed the ability to consistently compete at a high enough level to knock off either of the Crabbs or Bourne. There is never counting out Phil Dalhausser, especially as he and Avery Drost are riding three consecutive fifth-place finishes. Alison Cerutti and Billy Allen, too, have the capability to beat any team.

After those three teams, however, is a smattering of mid-level contenders who could beat anyone in a single match, though sustaining that level of play throughout an entire tournament is an altogether different matter. Troy Field, blocking for Evan Cory this weekend, has made three AVP finals; Tim Brewster and Kyle Friend have made two semifinals; Paul Lotman has won an AVP and his partner, Tim Bomgren, has made three finals; Hagen Smith has made a semifinal, as has Chase Frishman, Cody Caldwell, Jake Dietrich, Dave Palm, and Bill Kolinske, who is blocking for the Ageless Wonder, John Hyden.

Perhaps a breakthrough will be had in Manhattan.

The wide open women’s field

The women’s scene on the AVP is a fascinating one — at once the deepest it has ever been and also the most wide open. It’s deep in the sense that five of the top-15 in the Olympic rankings compete on the AVP: Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, Terese Cannon and Sarah Sponcil, Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles. Yet it’s also wide open in the sense that Olympic qualification is the main priority, and that priority has taken Cheng and Hughes, Nuss and Kloth, and Wilkerson and Humana-Paredes to Germany this weekend for the Hamburg Elite16. Add onto that the fact that Sponcil and Cannon are not playing in Manhattan Beach and what you have is the most wide open Manhattan Beach Open in recent memory.

Only two players in the field have a Manhattan Beach Open title: Kelley Kolinske, who is with Hailey Harward; and Sarah Pavan, blocking for Geena Urango.

Flint and Scoles top the seeding, and after that, teams seeded 2 through 32 are hardly more than a toss-up in any given matchup. Corinne Quiggle and Sarah Schermerhorn are the only team in the field who has won a title this season, doing so in Hermosa Beach, a tournament that was equally wide open as the top-ranked players were competing in Gstaad, Switzerland.

The only guarantee this weekend is that at least one new player will put their name on the Pier.

Atlanta TV woes

The men’s final of the Atlanta AVP Open on August 6 was delayed by weather and subsequently its broadcast was affected. VolleyballMag asked the AVP for a statement:

“Our women’s final aired on ESPN2, and the men’s final did as well until it was delayed by lightning mid-way through the first set. Sunday’s weather in Atlanta was extremely volatile most of the afternoon. The men’s final resumed only when it was safe to do so, and after a second delay, was finally completed more than five hours after it began.

With the uncertainty of when we would be able to complete the men’s final, combined with a number of variables related to the producing the stream, we felt it best to air the match on Bally Live, where all our fans could watch free, and we communicated this to our fans on social media.”

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