AVP Chicago Open: The shove, the winners, the shoes, the league ahead

Call it “The Shove Seen Round the World Wide Web.”

Plenty of other highlight-reel moments and compelling storylines were present as the AVP concluded the traditional “bracket” phase of its 2024 season with the third Heritage Series event in Chicago over the Labor Day Weekend.

But social media exploded on Saturday, Day 2, when USA Olympian Chase Budinger and the AVP’s resident “bad boy,” Trevor Crabb, engaged in an on-court exchange of barbs that culminated with Chase giving Trevor a hard shove that sent him tumbling to the sand.

An up-close-and-personal video clip quickly hit the Internet and instantly became THE hot topic for beach-volleyball die-hards and even casual fans who might have wondered, “Is this the AVP or the WWE? Didn’t Budinger used to play in the NBA?”

(Click here to see the video of the shove)

While such physicality certainly was not in keeping with volleyball’s standing as a zero-contact “etiquette” sport, a heated rivalry with verifiable bad blood between two of the best teams on its men’s side certainly does hurt the AVP as it seeks to capture the critical casual eyeballs needed to stoke interest in the inaugural AVP League series that kicks off in two weeks in Los Angeles.

The antipathy has bubbled for a while as Budinger (who played in the NBA for four teams from 2009 through 2015) and partner Miles Evans leapfrogged Crabb and Theo Brunner at the 11th hour of the lengthy Olympic qualifying cycle to earn the United States’ second berth in the recent Paris Games.

When Crabb and Brunner won the iconic Manhattan Beach Open, the “Wimbledon” of American beach volleyball and the first AVP event after Paris, in between dropping multiple unfiltered F-bombs on a live national TV broadcast in the postmatch interview, Trevor said that he and Theo should have represented the U.S. in the Olympics. Fighting words, evidently.

The situation boiled over early in a winners-bracket tilt, described as a “grudge match” on the AVP Bally Live stream by analyst Rich Lambourne. On a “Chamber of Commerce” Saturday afternoon in front of a packed crowd on Stadium Court at Chicago’s Oak Street Beach, chirping and pointing aplenty had transpired. It came to a head when Trevor, as the impromptu blocker, rejected a spike attempt in transition by Budinger straight down to the sand.

Crabb arguably was overly effusive in his celebration. He barked at Chase and immediately crossed under the net, since the stuff gave his team a 4-3 lead on the first side change. As he slid past Budinger, Chase gave him a slight bump with his elbow. Both kept walking, but Budinger turned around at the net. By this time, Crabb had turned around, too.

Budinger purposefully strode toward Trevor and, without warning, aggressively shoved Crabb in the chest with both hands. Crabb fell backward. As Chase walked toward him, Trevor popped off the sand, scooted past his antagonist while pointing and pleaded his case with the up referee, and then was held back by the down ref.

Lambourne’s knee-jerk reaction on commentary: “Chase needs to collect himself because that’s well out of line. You can’t put your hands on people and you certainly can’t shove them to the sand.”

The back-and-forth barbs and lobbying of the referees went on for a while. A controversial decision was rendered. Budinger and Crabb would each be socked with red cards, which made the score 5-4, and created a perplexed announcing booth. “Red card to Trevor? That can’t be right!” Lambourne exclaimed.

Crabb and Brunner would go on to win the first set 21-19, but Budinger and Evans rebounded to claim the next two, 24-22 and 15-12, to advance to the semifinals. More chirping followed after the match.

Chase rationalized his shove of Crabb by saying, “I’m tired of his talk. He’s been talking all season about my partner and all that s–t. So it was time for someone to talk back and challenge him – and that’s what I did.”

Evans stood solidly in support of his partner. “Everyone hyped this up for a long time. I was stoked that Chase went underneath the net and shoved Trevor a little bit,” he said. “It fired us both up. Happy to get the win for sure. They’re a good team always, but we’re Olympians.”

Trevor admitted that he was  “confused about how I got a red card … so confused … but next time I won’t fall down, I guess.”

Then he added, wryly, “There may have been a little flop in there.”

On what might have provoked Budinger, Crabb said, “He’s just a little sensitive. He gets blocked and he’s all upset.”

In the big picture, this rivalry looks to have Plastic Man-type legs. Both teams are among the eight men’s pairs that will square off in the AVP League, which no doubt will be a major marketing point for the ground-breaking fall series to be held in outdoor tennis venues and indoor arenas.

“It’s competitiveness on both sides,” Trevor said. “I’m all for it. Obviously, they might have overstepped it a little bit, but it’s all good.”

The short term, however, proved problematic for Crabb and Brunner, who were dumped into the contenders bracket. Later on Saturday, as the sun had fallen behind the Lake Shore Drive skyscrapers directly to the west of Oak Street Beach, in a setting reminiscent of Gabby Hartnett’s fabled Homer in the Gloamin’ at Wrigley Field, defending Chicago champs and top seeds Crabb and Brunner were bounced out of the tournament. Midwesterner Tim Bomgren and Troy Field, seeded 13th, erased the possibility of a potential Sunday redux of the hot rivalry with a 21-23, 24-22, 15-12 victory.

The rest of the story

A lot more AVP news was made in Chicago on a sunny-but-windy Championship Sunday:

— Olympic silver medalists Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson of Canada flipped the script in the Windy City on U.S. Olympians Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, winning an air-tight three-set final.

— Taylor Crabb – playing in socks and sneakers while nursing an injury to his left foot – and partner Taylor Sander advanced to the men’s title tussle before running out of steam against American Olympians Miles Partain and Andy Benesh. The popular Taylors had been bounced into the contenders bracket after losing in the first round of the modified double-elimination event on Friday.

— April Ross and Alix Klineman, the gold medalists from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, were named as a wild card among the eight women’s teams that will compete in the AVP League. All of the 16 teams that were selected for the series that will run from Sept. 14-15 through the championships on Nov. 9-10 in Carson, Calif.

Wildly popular Canadians Mel and Brandie had fallen to huge fan favorites Kloth and Nuss, known as TKN, in three sets in the previous two Chicago title matches. This time, a jammed venue (with paid general-admission in the grandstand for the first time) at windy Oak Street Beach and a national broadcast television audience on The CW witnessed another nail-biter between two of the top teams in the world, both of which had gone unscathed through the 16-team draw.

Mel and Brandie took the first set 21-17 and TKN won the second by the same score. The silver medalists gained critical 10-6 separation in the tiebreaker when some good fortune fell their way. Humana-Paredes made a diving dig inches off of the sand and the ball flew upward. Lefty Wilkerson fanned on a knuckle-poke, but the ball dribbled over, landing on the other side inches from the net.

TKN cut into the advantage, but a sharp kill by Brandie on a second-ball option put an exclamation point on a 15-13 victory.

On the pivotal “dribble” point, smiling Mel said with a straight face, “That was a highly executed play. We practice that.”

Added Wilkerson: “One-hundred percent effort on Mel’s and my part. I don’t believe in luck.”

Third-seeded Mel and Brandie swept Geena Urango and Toni Rodriguez, seeded sixth, in the semifinals. Top seeds TKN had a tougher go, weathering a three-setter (15-13 in the tiebreaker) over fellow U.S. Olympians Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, the No. 2 seeds).

It’s gotta be the shoes

Playing in athletic footwear is unheard of at any level on the beach, but the younger Crabb sibling defied all the odds.

Taylor’s injury was enough of an issue that Sander conceded, “We almost didn’t play. He wanted to play, but I was like, ahhhh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. But he’s a warrior, man. No one else could have done it.”

Asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 the degree of difficulty of playing in shoes on sand, Taylor said, “Every game kind of got better because I got used to it. But that first game, it was an 8 out of 10, pretty difficult.

“I’ve got an injury, and that’s why I wore it to give it more cushion. But, obviously, I would rather not play with shoes,” added Crabb, who admitted that he “hates” even playing in volleyball-specific sand socks.

After stumbling in the opening round on Friday, the third-seeded Taylors plowed through four  (count ‘em, four) matches on Saturday, including two three-setters. In the semifinals on Sunday, they topped fourth-seeded Budinger and Evans in three (15-7 in the tiebreaker).

The Taylors had gained an automatic berth into the AVP League by winning the first Heritage Series event at Huntington Beach. Crabb indicated that he would “be OK” for League play.

First-place finishers Partain and Benesh, seeded second, flashed their top form in a workmanlike 21-15, 21-15 victory over Crabb and Sander. The Olympians arguably had a tougher time dispatching Bomgren and Field in the semis (29-27, 21-15) and cruised through five matches over the Labor Day Weekend without dropping a set.

Since being eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Olympics, Miles and Andy have a second-place finish in the Manhattan Beach Open and a first in Chicago, giving them noteworthy momentum heading into the AVP League.

“Our results in the Olympics and at Manhattan were good, but we play really talented teams every weekend and you have to be on your A-plus game when you play them,” the 6-foot-9 Benesh said. “It was great to pick up another win in the AVP.”

“I’m super-excited to get started in the league,” Partain said. “The format sounds awesome and seems like the best path for our sport. I’m eager to see where it goes.”

The League: Who’s in?

Gold medalists Ross and Klineman, both of whom are working their way back into form after having babies, were tabbed as wild-card entries into the women’s group for the AVP League.

Automatic entries were Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson (winners at Huntington Beach and Chicago) and Kloth and Nuss (the MBO champions). Also selected were Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles (MBO runner-ups), Cheng and Hughes, Urango and Rodriguez, Megan Kraft and Terese Cannon, and Kylie Deberg and Haylie Harward.

The eight teams on the men’s side are the Taylors (automatic, Huntington Beach), Trevor Crabb and Brunner (automatic, MBO), Partain and Benesh (automatic, Chicago), Budinger and Evans, Cody Caldwell and Seain Cook, Bomgren and Field, Billy Allen and Paul Lotman, and former Olympic gold medalist Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost.

Assignments to the league teams (Austin Aces, Brooklyn Blaze, Dallas Dream, LA Launch, Miami Mayhem, New York Nitro, Palm Beach Passion, and San Diego Smash) will be made shortly, with each squad having a pair from each gender and two reserve players (as needed) for each of the eight series events.

The top four point-scoring teams will move into the bracket-style season-ending championships, with the advancing players receiving additional bonuses based on team finishes.

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