SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter · Travis Mewhirter

Everything is Bigger in Texas -- Including Beach Volleyball! W/LJ Luciano

April 1, 2026·1 hr 16 min·5 clips

City's Challenge uses a whistle to end matches when a city reaches three wins.

LJ Luciano drops into Sandcast from Texas. The talk starts loose, with the usual studio chatter and a friendly welcome, before it shifts into the beach volleyball world he has been moving through in a lot of different ways. ATX Beach sits at the center. From there, the hosts revisit the early league days and the clinic energy, plus the sense that Austin and Texas have become a distinct pocket in the sport. The conversation keeps coming back to what LJ actually does. Setting, hitting, blocking, and digging all come up, along with the reality that a neck issue can make a full-time blocking role a harder ask than fans might think. That detail matters. It keeps the talk feeling less like a highlight reel and more like a real look at how beach players sort out what their bodies will let them do. The McKibbins are part of the story too. The hosts and LJ talk about wanting those four-man ideas back, even while admitting that the usual stack of time, money, bandwidth, and family keeps every good plan from becoming simple. The show remembers old runs, too. A previous ATX Beach event on 16th Street comes back up, along with the sight of Jefferson and Luke Walton showing up and giving the whole thing extra life. That leads naturally into bigger-picture dreaming. A Sandcast tour keeps coming up as an idea the crew talks about a lot, the kind of thing that only becomes real if someone keeps pushing. The RV talk makes that dream feel concrete. A Mercedes-Benz van, a wrapped Sprinter, and visible signage all get floated as part of a road setup that could carry the show from stop to stop. Even the closing talk stays practical. The conversation lands on atmosphere, player experience, and customer experience, which is a very beach-volleyball way to say that the sport works best when the whole event feels cared for. There is also a quiet appreciation for LJ himself. By the end, Sandcast has made a simple case: the sport grows because people keep building around it, not just playing in it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at Texas beach volleyball and the people trying to build it.

The piece keeps its focus on Texas beach volleyball, with LJ, ATX Beach, and the early league years giving it a clear center. It moves through setting, blocking, and the work of making an idea survive outside the ideal version of it, which fits the loose Sandcast rhythm without…

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Why you'd press play

If you want Texas beach-volleyball talk, a behind-the-scenes look at a new studio, and tour dreams getting mapped out, press play.

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