Cody Caldwell is having the time of his life, and is thriving because of it

HERMOSA BEACH, California — If one is ever to wonder how and why Cody Caldwell makes many of the decisions he does, the answer can often be derived from a simple matrix: When given two options, which is the most likely to lead to a good bit of fun?

It’s easy to wonder, when watching Caldwell, a 6-foot-6, 30-year-old who has won AVP Tour Series events as both a defender (in Atlantic City with David Lee) and a blocker (Waupaca and Laguna Beach with Seain Cook), why he is playing for relative pennies on the beach when his skillset could command respectable contracts indoors. Caldwell acknowledges such a question is a fair one, just as quickly as he acknowledges the answer is a simple one: Where’s the fun?

“I thought I’d rather go home and play beach volleyball professionally. I loved my time in Greece and France but I don’t want to be over here for nine months for the next eight or nine or ten years,” he recalled of his switch from indoors to beach. “I want to go home and play beach volleyball, I think I could find some success there and do it with the people that I love.”

He isn’t the first enormous talent to take a quick dip into the demanding international indoor schedule and decide it wasn’t for him. A two-time NCAA champion for Loyola Chicago as an outside hitter, there is little doubt, had Caldwell maintained the course, he would be a viable candidate for the USA national team. There’s no way to know, of course, just as there’s no way to know the same question for Taylor Crabb, another NCAA standout who played a quick season overseas before establishing himself as the best beach defender of his generation. Neither Caldwell nor Crabb has a single regret about the decision to switch to beach, stable contracts be damned.

“Had I stuck with it, I think I’d be in the mix,” Caldwell said on SANDCAST, shrugging. “I’m not saying I’d be starting or anything but I might travel with the team. If I knew that if I kept going I would have made the Olympics, then sure, it’s like ‘ah maybe I should have just stuck it out.’ I didn’t really want to be in Europe for nine months out of the year. Came home, tried my luck to see if I could make it on the beach in 2028. I’m having more fun than when I was playing indoor. Just the day to day lifestyle, the people you meet, the times you get to have, they’re good times.”

It would be difficult to miss the fun Caldwell is having, and the success that has come with it. For some, that sentence would be flipped, the success preceding the fun. Such is not the case with Caldwell, who maximizes the joy in order to maximize the success. It’s a useful explainer for why Caldwell played the Denver Tour Series this past summer with a good friend in Ryan Meehan, opting to descend back into the doldrums of the qualifier rather than being seeded straight into the main draw with one of the dozen or so players courting his talents — with whom he also could have likely won. Denver, which served as a qualifier for the Atlanta Gold Series, didn’t offer Caldwell much in the way of a rung up the AVP ladder to climb — he was already into Atlanta with Jake Dietrich — so he opted for an enjoyable experience with an old friend who could also play a little ball himself.

That same prism is also a useful explainer for why Caldwell and Chase Frishman went separate ways in spite of a brilliant opening to the 2023 season, with back-to-back third-place finishes in Miami and New Orleans and a gold medal at a NORCECA in Aguascalientes, Mexico. The vibe between the two had become tense, and a 13th at AVP Huntington Beach did little to lighten the mood. Caldwell went one way, to Meehan then Jake Dietrich then, finally, to Cook, while Frishman went another.

It’s often confusing for fans, why mid- and lower-level players on the AVP switch partners so often, in spite of what appears to be satisfactory on-court results. But for players like Caldwell, who have no designs on Paris 2024 but Los Angeles in 2028, it’s an exercise in career speed dating, finding what works, what doesn’t, what personalities and styles and skill-sets are optimal for you so that, when the time comes to settle on a single player, you know exactly what you’re looking for.

In Seain Cook, Cody Caldwell found something of a soul mate, and did so mostly on accident.

“We didn’t link up until Waupaca this year,” Caldwell said of the Tour Series with Cook in July. “I didn’t know who I was going to play the rest of the season with and I didn’t lock it down with him for the season at that point, it was just ‘You don’t have a guy for Waupaca, I don’t have a guy for Waupaca, let’s link up.’ ”

Waupaca served as a qualifier for the Manhattan Beach Open in July, with main draw bids awarded to the top four finishing teams. But Caldwell and Cook could have separately qualified on their entry points, depending on whom they partnered with for Manhattan. They planned on Waupaca being a one-off, after which they’d happily go their separate ways, Caldwell most likely to Dietrich, with whom he was also playing Atlanta, Cook to whomever was available with points. Only they happened to win Waupaca without dropping a single set, which meant they had to accept the Waupaca main draw bid into Manhattan.

“I didn’t know that,” Caldwell said, laughing.

Such was born one of the most entertaining teams on the beach. They hit hard, served even harder and yelled, somehow, even louder than they hit. And they won. A lot. They swept Alison and Billy Allen, and Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost in consecutive matches, lopping off one legendary blocker after the next.

“That was fun,” Caldwell said. “A big day and a long day.”

There’s that word again: Fun. It was even fun for Caldwell and Cook to take a relatively disappointing ninth in Chicago, a tournament in which they played excellent volleyball but didn’t come home with the results to prove it. They took Andy Benesh and Miles Partain to three, and did the same with Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander, losing to the latter only due to the last-minute heroics of the most formidable server in America.

“I’m totally happy with the volleyball we played [in Chicago],” Caldwell said. “People get a shit draw. Someone gets a shit draw in every tournament but you also have to beat them at some point.”

That “some point” is, given Caldwell’s current trajectory, getting awfully close. He hit .466 for the season, No. 10 on the AVP, ahead of Tri Bourne, Alison, Trevor Crabb, Troy Field, Chaim Schalk, and Taylor Crabb, among many, many others. He finished ninth in blocks and tied for No. 11 in aces. When the Paris Olympic quad reaches its end this June, and the partnership shuffle begins, Caldwell’s name will be at the top of many lists.

All of this, of course, depends on what the 2024 season will look like, an image that remains unclear, with new AVP ownership and no announced schedule. Whatever it looks like, he knows he has a partner, a beach soul mate, in Cook, and the same mission he’s been on since he switched to the beach: Fun.

“Every single match you get to play with Seain is a fun one. In my opinion, he’s the most entertaining player on the AVP,” Caldwell said. “His personality, the way he gets the ref involved, the crowd involved, the other players involved, I’ve played on the same side as him for four tournaments and I’ve played on the other side of him for years, and it’s not like you ever finish a match going ‘That Seain, man, he’s an ass hole.’ Nothing is ever personal, he’s chirping at everyone, he keeps it light, he keeps it friendly. Sure he might be playing games with people but it’s nothing personal, and it’s super entertaining.

“You have to worry about him making too many highlights. ‘Let’s go back to the rice and beans here Seain, less highlights.’ I’m not worried about him at all. Those are the kinds of characters our sport need. The more people like Seain the better for our sport.”

And their team, by extension, is better for the sport, one that merges authentic entertainment with genuine high-level volleyball — a volleyball that just so happens to be awfully fun to watch and play.

Just the kind of volleyball Cody Caldwell likes.