It’s all happening in Long Beach and the World Series of Beach Volleyball. The best way to keep up if you’re not there is follow on Twitter @WSOBV. The account has a remarkable 47,000-plus followers and is all over the competition going on this weekend.
You can always go to www.wsobv.com and for some newspaper accounts, try the L.A. Times story featuring the return of Kerri Walsh Jennings:
https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-asics-beach-volleyball-20150821-story.html
The Long Beach Press-Telegram account:
https://www.presstelegram.com/sports/20150821/thursday-report-from-asics-world-series-of-beach-volleyball-in-long-beach
Also, the FIVB has a nice story about Canadian and former Nebraska player Sarah Pavin:
https://www.fivb.com/en/about/news/the-telephone-call?id=56463
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Things are good at Texas.
The Longhorns volleyball team has a new two-court practice facility located in the basement of the north end zone of the football stadium.
“It’s hard to say what I don’t like about this facility,” UT freshman Morgan Johnson said. “I love that we have our little kitchen area, our showers—the rain showers are nice—the locker room, we have our lounge area where you can come take a nap if you want. Basically, we can just stay here all day if we want to. We are so fortunate to be able to be able to play here and spend time here.”
The price tag was about $9 million.
“We are very fortunate to have the support of our administration They value the sport of volleyball here at Texas,” said 15th-year Texas head coach Jerritt Elliott, whose team won the 2012 NCAA title and lost in the national semifinals the past two years.
“It turned out to be state-of-the-art and gives our athletes the ability to be successful on the court, but also have the ability to have an easy transition time to be successful in the classroom and their day-to-day schedules.”
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Karch Kiraly has a remarkable talent pool from which to choose his national teams as we get within a year of the 2016 Rio Olympics. The roster for the team that will compete in the World Cup starting August 22 in Japan:
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Among the leagues announcing their preseason teams this week were the American Athletic Conference, where Central Florida is the favorite and SMU’s Avery Acker is the player of the year:
https://theamerican.org/news/2015/8/17/WVB_0817151314.aspx
The Missouri Valley, where Wichita State is again a prohibitive favorite:
Finally, the Sun Belt Conference coaches picked defending-champion Arkansas Little Rock:
https://www.sunbeltsports.org/index.aspx?path=wvball&
