#Chip mccaw volleyball professional

This will be a fun team to follow if they choose to stick it out and play a few together. They’re also a good team in that it’s a classic lefty-righty, defender-blocker scenario, with two good jump serves coming from two entirely different angles and trajectories. Webber moved to Southern California from Michigan, for goodness sakes. They’re both young, incredibly talented, with ceilings that aren’t even close to being tapped, and they’re as hungry as anyone you’ll meet on the beach. This is a team that I hope stays together for more than five minutes, unlike every other qualifier team in AVP history (I’m included in this, too, so I’m not just bashing everybody else). This is a great team, both mentally and physically, as Lotman brings the power while Partain brings the control, Lotman brings the aggressiveness and Partain brings the craft. Lotman, for one, is far more beachy than indoor now, and Partain has another year of competing at the highest level, getting loads of reps against some of the best in the country. Enter Lotman, with whom Partain played in AVP Seattle 2018, losing in the final round of the qualifier to Mike Brunsting and Eric Beranek in what was Beranek’s first main draw.īoth Lotman and Partain have made massive gains since then. With Lotman and Ospina breaking up, he, then, needed a defender, and with Marcus Partain starting school at UCLA, Miles, then, needed a split-blocker or just a blocker. He’s just different, and he does pack a similarly-aggressive serve - his is more about location than heat - and he has a massive window, especially on the packed sand in Chicago. Ospina is a bit different than del Sol, though not in a bad way. If there’s anybody in the qualifier who plays similar to Lotman, it’s Amorim, who, like Lotman, has an excellent indoor background, beats the living bejeezus out of balls, and serves bombs. And with Paul Lotman and Gabe Ospina stumbling after a successful start to the season, they split, leaving Ospina looking for a blocker and Amorim looking for a defender.Īmorim makes perfect sense for Ospina. With Skylar del Sol getting promoted by Ed Ratledge - Rafu Rodriguez has coaching obligations and cannot play he’s not injured - Amorim was without a partner. This is similar to Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan being relegated to the New York qualifier in 2018, though anyone who participated in that one will remind you what happened: They lost, to Delaney Knudsen and Jess Sykora, in the final round. I can’t think of a better team that has ever been in an AVP qualifier, though my knowledge is limited by the little time I’ve spent in the sport. Theo Brunner and John Hyden, a team with 16 combined AVP victories, the most recent of which came a year ago in Hermosa Beach, would be in the qualifier. But then he was kinda serious, and when the entry list came out on Friday, he was dead serious. Just a funny little thing to say after a tough go in Manhattan where he was knocked out by Eric Beranek and Bill Kolinske, a team that had come out of the qualifier. I thought Theo was joking when, at practice on Wednesday morning, he said that he and Hyden were going to be in the qualifier.

In any event, we’re back in Chicago, on beaches that may or may not be washed out, with a lot of teams that nobody has seen yet, with the freeze rule out the window for the qualifier, and, yeah, John Hyden is in the qualifier. And crazy times for a menagerie of teams, many of whom have broken up and have made new teams, some of which look promising, some of which look like they’ll be, at the very least, a lot of fun to follow.

#Chip mccaw volleyball professional

These are crazy times in professional beach volleyball. Look for our women’s preview on Wednesday. The tournament on Lake Michigan starts Thursday with the qualifier. He has won 27 domestic tournaments and one FIVB.Īnd he’s back in the qualifier for AVP Chicago. Now, I look roughly the same age – I will never grow out of this baby face - but since Huntington Beach of 2002, when Hyden was seeded Q5 with Chip McCaw, he has played in 245 professional events. That’s what I looked like the last time John Hyden played in an AVP qualifier. He fights with his brothers, thinks taking girls to movies is the most nerve-wracking experience this world has to offer, and has never played volleyball. He’s 12 years old, plays shooting guard for the North Carroll Panthers, midfield soccer for the North Carroll Comets - God bless those days - and first base and pitcher for the Hampstead Heat. The picture you see just below this paragraph is of a young Travis Mewhirter.