SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter artwork

SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter

377 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 131 ratings

SANDCAST is the first and leading beach volleyball podcast in the world. Hosts Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter take listeners into the world of the AVP, Volleyball World and any other professional beach volleyball outlets, digging deep into the lives of the players both on and off the court as well as all of the top influencers in the game.

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Episodes

Sean Rosenthal, and a career not measured by any normal standards

February 27, 2019 17:13 - 1 hour - 133 MB

It was almost as if Sean Rosenthal didn’t believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. “Leaving Jake [Gibb] for Phil [Dalhausser],” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “might have been the worst volleyball decision of my career.” He smiled, laughed. Then said it again, as if to cement it into reality what he had just admitted. Rosenthal’s partnership with Dalhausser was a fascinating one, though the reactions to it, including Rosenthal’s o...

FloridaCast: Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena are all in for Tokyo 2020

February 20, 2019 17:00 - 40 minutes - 73.7 MB

To be honest, the sound bye you’re looking for in this podcast comes around the three-minute mark. You can fast forward there if you’d like. Tri Bourne, taking SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter on the road for a training camp in Florida, asks Phil Dalhausser and his coach, Jason Lochhead if they are all in for the upcoming quad. “Yep.” “Yep.” Two words. All you need to know. Dalhausser and Nick Lucena are all in for the two-year push for the 2020 Tokyo Olymp...

Beach Volleyball stocks to buy prior to the 2019 season

February 13, 2019 17:00 - 43 minutes - 79.1 MB

Alas, we get our first look. It was supposed to come this past week, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., site of the late Fort Lauderdale Major. But with the plug pulled on the season-opening Major of the beach volleyball season, we were forced to wait. For some, that wait ends this weekend, as four U.S. women’s teams, all new partnerships, will make the trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia for a two-star FIVB. Typically, no, two-stars would not garner much attention, but the four pairs heading overseas are...

Brooke Sweat: From considering retirement to playing with the GOAT

February 06, 2019 17:00 - 1 hour - 121 MB

It’s funny, sometimes, the path the universe can choose to take you. One minute, you’re lying on a training table, your torn shoulder being worked on. You’re pondering if this is it, the last tear. Perhaps it’s time to move back to Florida. Have kids. Raise a family. Move on. The next, you’re on a call with Kerri Walsh Jennings, the greatest to ever play the game, one of the most dominant athletes not only in the sport of beach volleyball but of all time. She’s looking for a partner, someon...

Chad Beauchamp: Not your everyday physical therapist

January 30, 2019 17:00 - 1 hour - 111 MB

No matter the country or tournament or prize money on the line, it is never an especially difficult task to identify which is the room of Chad Beauchamp. It’s the one overflowing with overgrown humans, with massagers, tables, tape, ice. “Chad has a bed for the athletes, a table, his bed that we’re not supposed to use but most of us sit on it anyway,” Tri Bourne said, laughing on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “We get legitimately excited when we know Chad ...

Rich Lambourne: The humble, self-deprecating, sarcastic gold medalist turned coach

January 23, 2019 17:00 - 57 minutes - 105 MB

The talk always turned to Taylor. As Taylor Crabb and Jake Gibb grew and developed as a new team, climbing the world ranks, piling up wins that once could have been perceived as upsets – over 2017 World Champs Andre and Evandro, over Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, over Italians and 2016 silver medalists Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo – most looked to Crabb, the 26-year-old quicksilver fast defender, as the reason for that success. It’s a justifiable stance, and not entirely wrong. But Gi...

Carly Wopat: Transitioning from indoor's highest level to beach's

January 16, 2019 17:00 - 58 minutes - 107 MB

Carly Wopat acknowledges that there are a number of skills that need to be refined, so be smoothed over, to be fully beached from their indoor counterparts. But she’s been an athlete all her life, a state champ in high school, an All-American at Stanford, a professional overseas. It’s simply a matter of time for most, and anyway, the majority of the fundamental skills are already there. There’s just one that gives her pause: setting, and hand setting.   “Initially I just wasn’t squaring up,...

SNOWCAST: Emily Hartong and Katie Spieler

January 09, 2019 17:00 - 48 minutes - 89.3 MB

There they stood, the four Americans, bundled in four to five layers of UnderArmour and other form-fitting warm weather gear. Bundled in beanies and gloves, headbands and, underneath it all, hand and feet warmers tucked in their makeshift soccer cleats and gloves. They – Emily Hartong, Katie Spieler, Karissa Cook, Allie Wheeler – had descended upon Moscow, Russia less than a week before Christmas to play volleyball. It does not take an astrophysics major or scientist or really anybody with ...

Tri Bourne, Trevor Crabb: Making the split-blocking push to Tokyo

January 02, 2019 21:54 - 44 minutes - 81.1 MB

It began as something fun. Nothing much more than, well, why not? Why not put two childhood friends on the same team? Friends who play the same side, the same position, who had never played defense at a professional level. And yet there Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb were, winning in Manhattan Beach, finishing with a seventh. Winning in Chicago, improving to fifth. Winning in China, claiming a gold medal. Winning in Hawaii, making a Sunday. Winning in Las Vegas, nearly stunning Russia’s top te...

Jon Mesko: Thinking deeper and celebrating Festivus

December 26, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 178 MB

Jon Mesko sincerely hopes you had a merry Christmas. He really does. He’s no Scrooge or Grinch. But there’s another holiday he loves, a “Festivus for the rest of us!” Those not indoctrinated with the classic Seinfeld episode, allow Frank Castanza, father of George Castanza, explain. “At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you.” “Is there a tree?” “No, but there’s a pole. No decorations. I find tinsel distracting.” “Festiv...

Billy Kolinske and Miles Evans: Climbing the world rankings by going all in

December 18, 2018 15:00 - 1 hour - 117 MB

Bill Kolinske won’t forget looking at the hill, the one with his car parked at the top. Earlier that morning, he had parked there for his first beach volleyball tournament, and he did what he had always done for all of his grass tournaments: He lugged a cooler packed of food and drinks for the day. At the earliest, he’d be finished by one in the afternoon, maybe, if the day went well, 5 p.m. But this wasn’t grass. It was beach. And when Kolinske got spanked by a couple of guys in their mid-...

Molly Turner: Following the perfectly unorthodox path to success

December 12, 2018 19:00 - 58 minutes - 108 MB

It’s difficult to blame Grand Canyon beach volleyball coach Kristen Rohr for forgetting. That when she looked around at her group of players, the one that began the 2018 season ranked No. 10 in the country, and said how they had chosen every one of them to come there, she forgot about Molly Turner. “I was like, ‘Not me,’” Turner said, laughing, on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I was the only one that wasn’t chosen by any of the coaches.” Coming out of a ...

Travis Mewhirter releases new beach volleyball book: We Were Kings

December 05, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 149 MB

Travis Mewhirter published his book, We Were Kings, on December 5. You can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble! I’ll always remember the first interview. It was September of 2016. I was sitting on my bed in my studio in Newport Beach. That bed also doubled as my office, seeing as my apartment was roughly 600 square feet and had room for a bed, kitchen, and TV, all within arm’s length of each other. On the other end of the phone was Tri Bourne – Tri Bourne! The guy I watched roof John Ma...

Stafford Slick: Beach volleyball's Viking duck hunter

November 28, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 142 MB

As if his path to beach volleyball wasn’t unique enough – raised in Minnesota, little to no volleyball background aside from a little club indoor, not a clue who men named Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser were – in his nine-year career thus far, Stafford Slick may have authored his own personal record book. Name another who has played with six different Olympians, including three gold medalists. Or anyone crazy enough to play in 17 – 17! – different NORCECAs with eight different partners. “...

John Mayer turns focus to full-time coaching

November 21, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 142 MB

It’s fitting that John Mayer would spend much of his retirement podcast talking about everyone except John Mayer. Much of it was spent discussing Trevor Crabb, despite Mayer even catching himself midway through and mentioning that he didn’t want it to be “a full Trevor Crabb podcast.” It didn’t stop him from singing Crabb’s praises further, though, nor did it stop him from elaborating on the positives of former partners Jeremy Casebeer, Ryan Doherty, Brad Keenan as well as his podcast partn...

SANDCAST anniversary episode: We made it!

November 14, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 131 MB

It was funny, what kept happening over the course over the year, a comical little motif that never failed to boggle my mind. People would thank me. They thanked me in Austin. To the great amusement and bafflement of my parents, they thanked me in New York. They thanked me in San Francisco. One person went as far as to ask for my autograph in Seattle. Mark Schuermann thanked me during my introduction on my stadium court match in Hermosa. A few lovely Georgians expressed their gratitude in C...

Wilco Nijland, creator the King of the Court series

November 07, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 132 MB

You’d have thought he was busy enough, Wilco Nijland. His plate of responsibilities includes only, oh, a 10-stop beach volleyball tour in the Netherlands, his role as the Controlling Operations Officer at Sportworx, and subbing in as the coach for the Dutch team of Sophie van Gestel and Marloes Wesselink. Why not add an entire new concept, a four-stop, international beach volleyball tour, on top of all that? In a year that was replete with new developments – a massive event to kick off the...

Evie Matthews, beach coach and right-hand man of John Hyden

October 31, 2018 17:58 - 1 hour - 144 MB

Tri Bourne and Evie Matthews are the first to admit it: They were not the thinkers of the trio between those two and John Hyden. Bourne was the up-and-coming player, a green, mid-20s blocker making his first rounds on the FIVB. Hyden was the veteran who preferred to fly on his own. Matthews was the coach who just preferred to fly with Bourne -- "A lot more fun," he said, laughing. That fun, of course, came with its share of hilarity. “One time,” Bourne said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball wi...

Jeff Alzina: Architect of beach volleyball powers

October 24, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 125 MB

In 1997, there were six countries with beach volleyball coaches for their national teams. Perhaps one of the most unqualified to do so was one of them. Jeff Alzina had never coached on the beach prior to ’97, nor had he ever really played at much of a high level, having made just one AVP main draw, in Chicago of 1992. But he still trained with the top guys, setting up drills and competitive practices, making it so that his “biggest experience [on the beach] wasn’t necessarily competing at a...

The view from the Top of the World, with Norway's Anders Mol and Christian Sorum

October 17, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 113 MB

John Mayer stood outside the player’s tent, not looking particularly disappointed despite being knocked out of the Huntington Beach Open less than an hour prior. He and Trevor Crabb had played their best match yet, he said. Norway’s then-relatively unknown youngsters, Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, had simply played better. “The blocker,” Mayer said, “reminds me of Phil [Dalhausser].” A 20-year-old kid? Compared to Phil Dalhausser? Had it been almost anyone else making that statement, a...

Refs are people too! With John Rodriguez

October 10, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 126 MB

Nick Lucena winked, and only one person in the stadium could have possibly seen it: head ref John Rodriguez. Lucena had always been known for his fiery demeanor, and though Rodriguez cannot recall the exact year of the wink, he estimates it came at a tournament in Florida, when Lucena and Phil Dalhausser were playing Matt Olson and Kevin Wong, which would date it to the mid-2000s, which also dates it to when Lucena’s temper was nearing its zenith. Or was that temper just theatrics? Somethi...

The World Tour-cast with Norway, Canada, Latvia, United States

October 03, 2018 17:00 - 33 minutes - 61.6 MB

Martins Plavins requested the mic from Aleksandrs Samoilovs. Had to set some matters straight. “I know,” Plavins said on Saturday night at p1440 San Jose, “that Edgars misses me.” He was joking – maybe, possibly, perhaps – but Sunday’s result, when the Latvians upended the world’s best in Norway’s Christian Sorum and Anders Mol in the finals, proved that there’s likely a bit of truth to the notion that Edgars Tocs, Plavins’ typical partner, may have been missing his defender. Plavins and ...

Dane Selznick previews p1440 San Jose

September 26, 2018 14:24 - 1 hour - 114 MB

Dane Selznick has seen it all. Seen every last one of beach volleyball’s many evolutions. He was there when players competed for little more than pride and maybe – maybe – a free dinner. He was there when two men named David Wilk and Craig Masuoka formed a promotional company named Event Concepts and began hauling in the Millers and Cuervos of the world and throwing legitimate prize money into tournaments. He was there when the AVP Tour was founded, in 1984, and when it collapsed, and when ...

SANDCAST roundtable: 'Play in as many tournaments as you can'

September 19, 2018 17:00 - 19 minutes - 35.8 MB

It became a recurring motif, though not exactly a conspicuous one. If you’re a regular listener to SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, you’ll know that our final question to our guests is some iteration of: “If you had to give an up-and-coming beach volleyball player one piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be?” Some might expect a secret drill, a certain lift in the weight room, that one key to unlocking their potential, the secret formula to why Ta...

Karissa Cook: Old fart, hood rat, awesomely effective volleyball

September 12, 2018 17:00 - 55 minutes - 101 MB

Call it old fart volleyball. Call it hood rat volleyball. Call it dirty or creative or funny or crafty or whimsical or whatever other name you’d like to label Karissa Cook’s decidedly awesome style of scoring points on a volleyball court. But you must, at the very least, call it this: effective. Effective enough that Cook and her partner, Katie Spieler, scored an invite to the AVP’s final event of the year, an invitational in Hawaii, where Spieler and Cook played their college ball. Effect...

Katie Spieler: 'Go out on the court and be you'

September 05, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 111 MB

The beginning of the best year of Katie Spieler’s burgeoning career began at once brutally and spectacularly. The brutal, as it tends to go in sports, preceded the spectacular, setback was succeeded by breakthrough. “One of my worst matches was my first game in Austin,” Spieler said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I was super bummed because I felt mentally not on, physically not on. I never call anyone on gamedays, but I called my sister and I was just ...

Eric Zaun: The Happy Gilmore of the AVP Tour

August 29, 2018 16:00 - 1 hour - 139 MB

The first thing you must know about Eric Zaun is that you cannot call him Eric Zaun. Don’t laugh. He’s serious. Maybe. Sort of. Well, you never can know with Zaun.   “I’ve actually been going by Danny Fahrenheit lately,” Zaun said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “You introduced me as Zaun but I like Danny Fahrenheit. I just don’t like the name Eric.” If you know Zaun, nothing about this is surprising. If you do not know Zaun, the 37 words above are an ap...

Jake Gibb isn't finished playing just yet

August 22, 2018 17:00 - 48 minutes - 88.4 MB

There are exactly two indicators in Jake Gibb’s house that there is a professional volleyball living there. One is a panorama of the 1976 Manhattan Beach Open, the year Gibb was born. The other is a panorama of the 2005 Manhattan Beach Open, the first of three occasions in which Gibb would win and cement his name onto the famed Manhattan Pier. “It’s just kind of cool to see what it was when I was born, and you see the crowd just lined up like 30 deep watching, I think it was [Steve] Obrado...

Tri Bourne is BACK ON THE BEACH

August 15, 2018 19:42 - 56 minutes - 104 MB

Phil Dalhausser stands, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “That,” he says, “looks so boring.” He’s watching a young man play volleyball by himself, tossing a ball, hitting it line, tossing another, hitting a cut, tossing another, hitting a high angle. Over and over and over, nearly two hours on end. Many of the passerby on the Manhattan Beach Pier that day could have reasonably concluded one of a few things: the guy was either bored, as Dalhausser suggested, had no friends to play with...

Caitlin Ledoux: Just doux you

August 08, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 118 MB

It’s a wonder how Caitlin Ledoux did it, given that she operates with the same 24 hours a day, the same seven days a week, as the rest of us. There she was, working full-time at Lululemon. There she was, coaching two or three club teams and a high school team. There she was, playing full-time professional beach volleyball, making three quarterfinals and her first career Sunday in Hermosa Beach, capping the year as the AVP’s Most Improved player. “I worked a lot,” she said on SANDCAST: Bea...

Steve Obradovich: The last true beach volleyball entertainer

August 01, 2018 16:29 - 49 minutes - 91.4 MB

Rolling with laughter. That’s likely what Steve Obradovich would be doing at the level of trash talk – what little there is, anyway – on today’s AVP Tour. Passive aggressive Instagram comments? Staredowns under the net? A few over the top celebrations? Ha. That's peanuts. Especially to the old school bona fides, the entertainers like OB. Take this snippet from an LA Times article from August of 1989: “You see, Obradovich is the bad boy of the beach. He's "OB," the last of the old-time v...

Rafu Rodriguez-Bertran: Winning weird in semi-retirement

July 25, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 133 MB

Rafu Rodriguez-Bertran was not supposed to win an AVP this year. Heck, he wasn’t even sure if he’d play an AVP this year. This past winter, he had a son, Nico, his first child. His club in Temecula, Viper Volleyball, was growing and taking off. He’d had an excellent career, one that took him as high as the 2015 World Championships. It was time for a shift in priorities. He told this to his partner, Piotr Marciniak, who nodded and went to Ty Loomis for Austin. Rafu sat out. And then beach...

Suckin' down Lobes and sharing sarcasm with Brian Cook

July 18, 2018 17:00 - 21 minutes - 39 MB

In December of 2017, the AVP made a landmark announcement: It would be partnering with Amazon Prime for the upcoming season, and several seasons after that. The partnership would include a much-improved livestream experience, with viewers able to watch on one of the most rapidly growing platforms, with a professional announcing team and a camera crew and interviews and features and everything one might expect when an athletic league teams up with one of the country’s most popular businesses....

Emily Day and Betsi Flint: Weekend warriors

July 11, 2018 18:03 - 23 minutes - 43.1 MB

It was a look that featured a strange blend of joy and exhaustion, one athletes know all too well. Emily Day and Betsi Flint had just wrapped up their first day at AVP San Francisco, playing the maximum number of sets (six), two of those going into extra points. Worse yet, they had lost their second match of the day, relegating them to the contender’s bracket, portending a long grinder of a road ahead if they were to make the finals in San Francisco and defend the Seattle title they earned ...

Chase Budinger: Dunking over P Diddy to bouncing on the AVP

July 04, 2018 16:00 - 1 hour - 157 MB

Oh, God. It was happening again. Chase Budinger had felt this before. He’d felt these nerves, that extra surge – no, surge might not do it justice, the extra deluge – of adrenaline. He knew what happened the last time. And here it was, all over again. His first point as a professional beach volleyball player, partnered with one of the all-time greats in Sean Rosenthal, matched up with the hottest team in the world in Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen, set on stadium court of the bigges...

Tri Bourne: I'm not back yet, but the warm up has begun

July 02, 2018 04:48 - 39 minutes - 72.2 MB

I’m not exactly back, BUT things are finally getting interesting for me! I’ve been touching the ball and hitting the gym for a few weeks now and mentally it feels amazing. Physically, it hurts so good. My health is not totally under control but things seem promising. Can your health ever be totally under control? Despite being asked [rightly so] almost daily about when l’ll come back and who I’ll be playing with by fans and peers, over the last year or so I did my best to not think abou...

Nicolette Martin: Just keep playing

June 27, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 128 MB

It’s just after 6 a.m. on June 23, and Nicolette Martin leans into her seat at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, a massive cup of coffee in hand, exhausted from both an early morning travel-day wake up and seven matches in the past three days at AVP Seattle. Her voice is gone, as it should be, for it was hardly 12 hours ago that she was battling in a white-knuckler of a three-set quarterfinal match against Amanda Dowdy and Irene Hester-Pollock. Up 13-12 in the third set, Martin and Allie Wheeler ...

Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan, the No. 1 team in the world with an even higher ceiling

June 20, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 120 MB

The pause, so slight, so innocuous, but present nonetheless, said more than words could. And, to be fair, Melissa Humana-Paredes did put a nice verbal spin on her and Sarah Pavan’s quarterfinal loss against Brooke Sweat and Summer Ross in Fort Lauderdale earlier in the year. She called it thrilling. “But…” and then came the pause, ever so brief, just enough to know that a fifth place for Canada’s top team, even in an FIVB Major, even in the first big event of the year, is nowhere near this...

Sarah Sponcil, Pac-12 Champ, National Champ, AVP finalist

June 13, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 117 MB

It may seem difficult to imagine at first, what with a Pac-12 title, an NCAA Championship and an AVP final under her belt in the span of just a few weeks, but yes, Sarah Sponcil does struggle from time to time. Take Spanish, for example. “I have not taken it since I was in fifth grade,” she said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “A lot of people take Spanish in high school, so it was elementary Spanish and I was like ‘Ok, we’re chillin’ with the colors and...

Taylor Crabb just keeps playing -- and just keeps winning

June 06, 2018 17:00 - 1 hour - 132 MB

There stood Taylor Crabb, arms raised, trophy in hand, smiling for cameras. A familiar pose that’s becoming quite regular for Crabb. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the left side or the right, with Jake Gibb or Tim Bomgren or Chase Budinger – Crabb can and will win with whomever he’s sharing the court, wherever the court may be. Outrigger Canoe Club? He can win there, as he did on myriad occasions, with myriad partners, as a youth. New York City? Yeah, he can win there too, alongside Gibb. It...

Patty Dodd: Manhattan Champ, National Champ, and more importantly, Coach

May 30, 2018 16:40 - 1 hour - 122 MB

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 Travis Mewhirter. Serious enough that, a year later, they wed, and Patty took Dodd’s last name,...

Mailbag No. 2: Who's the best U.S. player not named Phil?

May 29, 2018 02:43 - 32 minutes - 58.8 MB

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 [email protected].  Thanks to all who sent in questions for this week! We answer one of the most oft-wondered questions in American beach volleyball: Aside from Phil...

Tim Bomgren, from Minnesota to the finals of AVP Austin

May 23, 2018 17:00 - 52 minutes - 96.9 MB

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 in the country. While many in Southern California are training four or five days a week in Apr...

Adam Johnson: The Hall of Famer hiding in plain sight

May 16, 2018 19:00 - 1 hour - 126 MB

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 come against the Mikes – Mike Whitmarsh and Mike Dodd. Thirty seconds before the match, Stoklos ...

SANDCAST Mailbag: Tri's secret to jumping high, Travis's journey into volleyball

May 14, 2018 17:00 - 43 minutes - 80.2 MB

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 about beach volleyball. This week, we answered as many as we could in our self-imposed 30-minut...

Adam Roberts: Beach volleyball's talent finder

May 09, 2018 19:00 - 1 hour - 111 MB

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 steady diet of soccer, cross country, track and basketball, receiving offers from ACC schools to r...

For the Netherlands' Brouwer and Meeuwsen, it's all or nothing

May 02, 2018 18:00 - 1 hour - 129 MB

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 Jonathan Erdmann, a pair of Olympians. They were in the semifinals against the most unlikely of od...

For Kelly Reeves and Brittany Howard, it's all gucci vibes

April 25, 2018 18:19 - 1 hour - 110 MB

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, which is evident both on a volleyball court and in a podcast studio, suggests that the two have o...

Jose Loiola's legend only continues to grow

April 18, 2018 19:00 - 1 hour - 142 MB

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 he has sworn off alcohol during the week. It’s just one glass, right? Nothing compared to what...

'Weird-athletic, scrappy twig-noodle' Witt sisters prepared for rookie seasons

April 11, 2018 19:00 - 1 hour - 110 MB

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 dirty blonde hair and almond-shaped eyes and what they call “twig-noodle” frames? Kerri Wal...

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