Webber-Smith, Rice-Jerger win AVP VA Beach; World Champs news; Jurmala next

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The last time Logan Webber competed in Virginia Beach, he punted a ball and promptly earned a red card. This gifted the opposing team a point and, as it turned out, the match.

He did not do that this year.

On a hot and breezy East Coast Sunday afternoon, Webber and Hagen Smith won the AVP Virginia Beach Tour Series, upsetting top-seeded Billy Allen and Alison Cerutti 21-13, 22-20. And that they got to the final was accomplishment enough.

Webber and Smith barely made it out of pool.

Competing in their first tournament as a team, Webber and Smith, who entered Virginia Beach seeded second overall, were stunned by qualifiers John Schwengel and Dave Wieczorek (18-21, 21-18, 7-15). With the Tour Series format flipping to modified pool play this year, as opposed to the double-elimination format of 2022, Smith and Webber needed to beat Adam Roberts and Wyatt Harrison in the second round just to break pool, which would then put them in an uphill position in playoffs.

No matter. They swept every opponent thereafter, stumping Canada’s Jake MacNeil and Alex Russell in the first round (21-15, 21-19), Bryce Mayer and Brian Miller in the quarterfinals (21-17, 21-16), JD Hamilton and me in the semifinals (21-18, 21-18, though I believe the reported scores are wrong; by my memory it was 21-14, 21-19), and Allen and Cerutti in the finals.

Webber is no stranger to winning events of this magnitude.

In 2021, he and Evan Cory went on a tear, winning AVPNext Golds — the rough equivalent of a Tour Series before the advent of the Tour Series — in New Orleans, Waupaca and Seaside. He won the Laguna Beach Open, which has since been promoted to a Tour Series, with Seain Cook and they followed it up a few months later with a win at the Panama City Beach AVPNext Gold. But with a sluggish start to the year — three misses on international qualifiers and a 13th in Huntington Beach — Cory moved on to partner with Troy Field. Webber subsequently picked up Smith, who had been partnered with Bill Kolinske, one of a number of partnership dominoes on the men’s side.

The move seems to have worked out OK for all.

It’s the first tournament win for Smith in a little more than a year, the last being a CBVA with Jake Dietrich in April of 2022. And the win assures them, and three others, a spot in the main draw of the Hermosa Beach Pro Series.

Before Virginia Beach, Cerutti and Allen had taken the 10th automatic main draw berth into Hermosa Beach, which will be held the second weekend of July. But after the deadline, Cerutti dropped a finish, which would have put Smith and Webber ahead. With the uncertainty of how this would shake out in terms of which team was automatically in, both teams traveled to Virginia Beach.

Given that Cerutti and Allen maintained their automatic main-draw spot, Webber and Smith qualified, alongside Hamilton and me and fellow third-place finishers JM Plummer and Lev Priima. Because Cerutti and Allen were already seeded into the main draw, the bid they earned in Virginia Beach then trickles down to the highest-seeded fifth-place team, which goes to Andrew Dentler and Jake Landel.

There are still potentially more moving pieces to come.

Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk, and Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb, are both signed up for the Gstaad Elite16 — you can find the entry list here — which conflicts with Hermosa Beach. If they choose to compete in Gstaad, their main draw spots will be given to the next-highest seeded fifth-place finishers, which are, in order, Ian Satterfield and Jake Urrutia, and Carlos Jimenez and Tyler Penberthy. Bourne and Schalk are currently seeded No. 10 in the qualifier; Brunner and Crabb are still No. 6 on the reserve list.

Worth missing a fight: Macy Jerger, Megan Rice win AVP Virginia Beach

Travel with or anywhere near Macy Jerger and Megan Rice at your own risk this season. Two months ago, a deluge in Florida shut down the entire Fort Myers airport and the two couldn’t find another way to get to the AVP New Orleans Pro Series, where they were seeded fourth in the qualifier and had to forfeit.

On Sunday night, they experienced more travel issues, though these were of a decidedly more pleasant variety.

Rice and Jerger won the AVP Virginia Beach Tour Series, sweeping Carly Skjodt and Geena Urango (22-20, 21-16) in the final to claim their first professional victories each. And then, of course, Jerger’s flight was delayed and she missed her connection.

“I’m so exhausted I don’t even care,” she wrote on social media, followed by the hilarious and fitting hashtag, #noflymacy.

There’s good reason for the exhaustion. After winning pool play and the first round of playoffs on Saturday, Jerger and Rice had the most difficult road possible, mathematically speaking. Sunday required a quarterfinal win over third-seeded Brook Bauer and Katie Horton (22-20, 18-21, 15-10), a semifinal win over top-seeded Kim Hildreth and Teegan Van Gunst (23-25, 21-14, 15-11) and a finals victory over second-seeded Urango and Skjodt. All three of those aforementioned teams are already directly into the main draw of Hermosa Beach; Jerger and Rice needed to win to get in.

So win they did.

Joining Jerger and Rice in qualifying for the Hermosa Beach Pro Series are third-place finishers Carly Kan and Lexy Denaburg, Jessica Gaffney and Kelly Reeves, and youngsters Ashley Pater and Sarah Wood, the latter of whom currently holds the record for youngest to make an AVP main draw when she did so in Muskegon of 2022 at the age of 14 years, 1 month and 16 days old. Just missing the cut are fifth-place finishers Devon Newberry and Jaden Whitmarsh, who fell in an epic quarterfinal to Urango and Skjodt (21-18, 22-24, 17-19).

World Champs tickets punched in the Dominican Republic

While the Virginia Beach Tour Series doubled as both a tournament and a qualifier to a bigger tournament — Hermosa Beach, in this case — a NORCECA in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic did the same. Only this was both a tournament and a qualifier to the biggest tournament on the beach volleyball calendar: the World Championships, which will be held across three cities in Mexico this October.

Four teams punched their tickets to World Championships (kind of). To qualify for the World Champs, all a team needed to do was make the semifinals. For the women, it was Puerto Rico’s Maria Gonzalez and Allanis Navas, USA’s Kelley Kolinske and Hailey Harward, Canada’s Sophie Bukovec and Shanice Marcelle, and Bethania Almanzar and Julibeth Payano of the Dominican Republic. For the men, the four bids go to Cuba’s Noslen Diaz and Jorge Alayo, Dany Lopez and Duben Mora of Nicaragua, Canada’s Sam Schachter and Dan Dearing, and the USA’s Andy Benesh and Miles Partain.

In the case of six of the teams mentioned above, World Champs is as simple as that: They have punched their tickets via NORCECA. However, for two — Benesh and Partain, and Kolinske and Harward — it is a tad more complicated. The World Championships are a 48-team colossus of a tournament, with a cap of four teams per federation. Twenty-four teams receive automatic main draw entries based on their top six finishes of the calendar year up through the Hamburg Elite16 in the middle of August. If the USA has four teams who earn a bid via points, the continental bid Harward and Kolinske just won will go to the next-highest finishing team in the Dominican Republic. In this case, that is Cuba’s Amanda Armenteros and Yenifer Rivera.

Currently, the USA is all but assured three teams — Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Sarah Sponcil and Terese Cannon — earning an automatic bid via points. Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, as well as Savvy Simo and Toni Rodriguez, are also in line to be in the top-24 by the mid-August deadline which makes it, at best, unlikely Harward and Kolinske will be able to use the NORCECA route to qualify for World Championships.

On the other end of the spectrum is Partain and Benesh.

They are currently the top-ranked team in the United States, and with three high finishes on their resume this season — fifth in the Itapema Challenge, fourth in Saquarema, bronze at the Ostrava Elite16 — it’s unlikely they’ll need the NORCECA bid to qualify for World Championships. It is, however, a good hedge against injury or a slump. If one of them were to get injured or they simply need a break, they can take it, skip events, and still be fine for World Championships. If they do qualify via points, which they are on track to do, their bid will go to Guatemala’s Andy Blanco and Luis Garcia.

After winning their quarterfinal, Partain and Benesh forfeited their semifinal and bronze medal match. This is a relatively common practice at this specific event, where there are no points or prize money on the line; only World Championship bids. They have also pulled out of this weekend’s Jurmala Challenge, likely protecting their bronze medal finish in Ostrava and focusing on Elite16s, where they are now directly into the main draw, an enviable position that is wise to protect.

As for that Jurmala Challenge …

Nine USA teams headed to Latvia

Back on the plane: More than a dozen USA players are in next weekend’s Challenge event in Jurmala, Latvia. Three men’s teams — Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk, Miles Evans and Chase Budinger, Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner — are in the main draw, while just one, Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, will do so for the women.

In Thursday’s qualifier, then, are Savvy Simo and Toni Rodriguez, Molly Turner and Maddie Anderson, Megan Kraft and Emily Stockman, Kelley Kolinske and Hailey Harward, and Brook Bauer and Katie Horton.

The only men’s team in the qualifier was Ben Vaught and me, but we are dropping out after I sprained my wrist in Virginia Beach.