Taylor Crabb-Taylor Sander dominate AVP Huntington Beach; Mel-Brandie win thriller

HUNTINGTON BEACH, California — In the moments after Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander closed one of the most dominant AVP performances in recent memory, winning five straight matches in 10 straight sets while hardly breaking a sweat en route to an AVP Huntington Beach Open title, Crabb and Sander were asked about their peers absent in Huntington, the ones still chasing an Olympic berth.

“They’re probably jealous right now,” Sander said, referencing Andy Benesh and Miles Partain, Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, and Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, all of whom are in Portugal for this upcoming week’s Espinho Elite16.

“We’re out here in beautiful Huntington Beach, they’re grinding in Portugal.”

“They’re probably crying in their hotel rooms,” Crabb said with a wink and a laugh — while he was winning in front of a home crowd, bringing in more prize money in a single event ($15,000) than any of his peers this year. Which made the next question an easy one for Crabb and Sander to answer: Do they have any plans of resuming play on the Beach Pro Tour after the Olympics?

A shared look. An unequivocal embracing of the moment as it was: The best volleyball they have played to date, even better than the scintillating run they put on during their maiden Manhattan Beach Open win in 2023, in front of a magnificent, sold-out crowd that packed the stands and filled the Pier.

“It’s all about the AVP League,” Crabb said. “Sorry.”

“Look at this atmosphere,” Sander added. “I was taking it in during the National Anthem. The Pier is packed with people, the stands are packed with people cheering. We’ve done a lot of international stuff and you don’t get this. We’re so lucky to have the beach volleyball fans that we do here. It’s so nice to come back and be at one of the best beaches in the world.”

While this has been one of the longest off-seasons — and maybe the longest off-season — of either Sander or Crabb’s beach career, their season was automatically extended into November. Their win in Huntington Beach clinched one of the eight slots in the fall’s AVP League, an all-new concept that adds incentive and pressure to each of the three AVP Heritage Series events this season.

“During our Friday matches, we were nervous,” Crabb said. “Every tournament means something. It’s good to get that under our belt and have some fun.”

If fun wasn’t had during Huntington, it’s difficult to imagine what might suffice as a good time. Crabb and Sander’s 21-15, 21-15 sweep over Seain Cook and Cody Caldwell in the finals was the exclamation point on a weekend in which not a single team came within two points and they outscored opponents by 46 total.

“We did our thing,” said Sander, the 2023 Server of the Year who finished tied for third with eight aces. “We showed up here. We have to show up and play and win. I’m proud of us that we did that. It doesn’t matter if those teams aren’t here. Any time we play, we want to win and we want to get better and we did that and I’m proud of that.

“We played our game, to be honest. We played our game and our game was good enough.”

Good enough, too, for Cook and Caldwell, who made their first career finals. Their only losses, in fact, were both to Crabb and Sander, the first in the quarterfinals, the second in the finals. They made their way back to the finals with wins over Evan Cory and Alison Cerutti (23-21, 21-12) and Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk (16-21, 21-15, 18-16).

Melissa Humana-Paredes, Brandie Wilkerson reach new level in APV Huntington win

The women’s winners, Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, had to go beyond their already-world class game in claiming their first AVP win since the season-opening Miami Open of 2023. A quarterfinal loss to Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth (21-17, 19-21, 12-15) that was as streaky as it was brilliant sentenced them to the contender’s bracket and three matches on Sunday. Wins were required over Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft (21-12, 21-19) in the quarterfinals and World Champs Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes (21-19, 21-16) in the semifinals to earn a rematch with Nuss and Kloth.

And then that rematch began to show so many shades of the first. A first set win preceded a late second-set advantage, one that was wiped by Nuss and Kloth and flipped into a 21-18 loss. As they did in the quarterfinals, they went to three, a situation in which they had split the previous six matches that went three sets.

But in that third set, Humana-Paredes sustained an otherworldly defensive performance, tacking on five additional digs to bring her total for the match to 30, and total for the tournament to 98 — 27 more than No. 2 Megan Kraft. In fact, her 30 digs for the match would rank her at No. 10 for the entire tournament on its own.

“We’ve been wanting this win for quite a while,” Wilkerson said after the eventual 23-21, 18-21, 15-13 win over Nuss and Kloth in the finals.  “We never gave up and it showed.”

As Crabb and Sander did, Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson clinched a berth in the fall league, leaving seven remaining spots for their peers to claim in Manhattan Beach in August and Chicago in September.

“It’s incredible. We’ve been so excited about this league,” said Wilkerson, who led the tournament in blocks with 23. “We love everything the AVP is doing and this has been an amazing start and we can’t wait.”

“We battle with them every single time,” Nuss said. “Unfortunately we had a couple of points that didn’t go our way but they played a hell of a match so kudos to them. It would have meant a lot.

“We haven’t won a California tournament, it’s definitely something we would have liked to have changed but we’re just proud, we had fun and the crowd has been awesome.”

Phil Collin contributed to this story.

We will have an AVP Huntington Beach Open photo gallery Tuesday with shots from Mark Rigney, Will Chu, Rick Atwood, Jim Wolf and Allen Szto.