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

MAILBAG! Breaking Down The AVP Schedule; The Return to Belmar; World Champs Review

December 3, 2025·1 hr 11 min·6 clips

Tri Bourne describes how Australian fans heckle players intensely during matches but are genuinely nice off the court.

Travis Mewhirter opens the episode recording from Adelaide, Australia where he has been covering the Beach Volleyball World Championships. He describes the crowd as a late-arriving Australian-centric audience that only packs out for matches featuring local stars Mark and Nick and Isaac and Capogrosso. He compares the atmosphere unfavorably to Netherlands, Hamburg, Austria, and Mexico, ranking Austria's Red Bull-promoted events as the gold standard. The arena has pre-sold out for semifinals and medal rounds. John Mayer walks through the full 2026 AVP schedule, which includes three heritage majors — Huntington Beach in May, Belmar in May, and Manhattan Beach in August — along with a series of contender stops and an expanded AVP league running through Chicago in September. Prize money ranges from $300,000 total at Manhattan to $20,000 total at contender events, making World Tour stipends essential for players looking to earn a living. John frames 2026 as the last year for players to experiment with partnerships before Olympic qualifying begins, predicting teams will position themselves rather than take sabbaticals from World Tour. Travis and John discuss the return of Belmar, with Travis recounting how he and Jeff Carlson, as the lowest seed at the 2012 Cuervo Belmar tournament, upset number one seeds Haydn Hughes and Evy Rottgering — a result that Travis credits with attracting Haydn's attention and launching his career. They answer fan questions about beach volleyball statistics, with Travis explaining the Beach Data system used for broadcast scouting, and arguing that 'scoring leaders' is a meaningless stat compared to side-out percentage. Travis recounts that Kristen and Taryn posted zero errors in their quarterfinal — no service errors, no hitting errors — and that Kristen has only five errors through six tournament matches. He compares their baseline control to Kyrie Irving's efficient precision and notes that beach data shows opponents in-system 86% of the time yet siding out less than 50%. They also discuss that April Ross, in her USA volleyball coaching role, sat out and did not coach when USA teams played each other in quarterfinals. Fan Q&A covers Travis's post-retirement body recovery, his breakfast habits including yogurt with 'purple dibs' cacao nibs, and his upcoming recreational play with Myles Partain in Pompano.

As heard by us

A loose, funny beach-volleyball conversation that turns partner rules and qualifying into real stakes.

The episode opens in loose, funny beach-volleyball shop talk before settling into the AVP League qualifying rules, where switching partners can forfeit a protected spot and send teams back through Manhattan.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want the AVP League partner-switch rules, with some beach chaos around it?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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