West Coast - East Beach
By Gene Mick - AVP Tour.com
6/13/2002

Association of Volleyball Professionals action resumes on Santa Barbara’s East Beach this weekend as the AVP 2002 Michelob Light Santa Barbara Open Presented by Paul Mitchell begins with the Qualifier Tournament on June 14. Main Draw action kicks off on June 15 and the men’s and women’s Finals will be played on June 16.
Last week, Albert Hannemann and Jeff Nygaard captured the men’s title while Holly McPeak and Elaine Youngs won the women’s event in the AVP Hermosa Beach Open presented by Michelob Light.
One fan described Hannemann and Nygaard’s upset win over Kevin Wong and Stein Metzger in the Hermosa Beach men’s final as “spine-tingling and nerve-racking.” That best-of-three match, typically lasting 50 minutes with scores like 21-19, 18-21, and 15-13, instead required one hour and 40 minutes to complete and the final scores were 18-21, 29-27, and 27-25. Virtually everyone in the crowd was on their feet throughout the third game waiting to see the ultimate victors of that epic battle.
Wong and Metzger won last year on East Beach as did Dianne DeNecochea and Liz Masakayan. This year, DeNecochea is paired with Barbra Fontana. They faced McPeak and Youngs in both the Huntington Beach and Hermosa Beach AVP finals earlier this season and came up short. Masakayan, teamed with fellow UCLA alumnus Ashley Bowles, is looking to add to her 45 open tournament victories in Santa Barbara. Masakayan and Bowles took a respectable ninth in Hermosa last week. That was the first time they played together and only the second time Bowles has played professionally on the beach. A large crowd gathered around an outer court in Hermosa Beach to watch the second-round winners bracket game in which Masakayan and Bowles narrowly lost to Fontana and DeNecochea, 13-21, 21-13, and 27-25. Bowles was a standout player both at Manhattan Beach’s Mira Costa High School and at UCLA.There is a host of other previous Santa Barbara winners looking to repeat this weekend.Linda Hanley, with 46 total victories behind her, has won four times in Santa Barbara with Nina Matthies. She’s looking for a win this time with partner Lisa Arce who has 20 previous tournament titles. In Hermosa last week, a loss to Annett Davis and Jenny Johnson Jordan gave them a fifth place finish. Davis and Johnson Jordan finished third in Hermosa and in Huntington Beach. Karch Kiraly, all time open win leader with 142 total victories, has won six times in Santa Barbara, his hometown. Laz Kiraly, a regular daily player on East Beach and Kiraly’s father, will be among the fans rooting for Kiraly to win again this weekend, this time with partner Brent Doble. Laz Kiraly was in Hermosa Beach last weekend observing his son playing adeptly with Doble, including a stunning 19-21, 21-13, and 15-11 stadium court upset of Huntington Beach’s winners Eric Fonoimoana and Dax Holdren. Both these teams ended up with fifth place finishes in Hermosa.
Lee LeGrande, who won Santa Barbara in 2000 with Franco Neto, has a career total of four tournament victories. He won three others with Doble. LeGrande teams with Mike Lambert in Santa Barbara. LeGrande and Lambert share Hawaii roots and both are graduates of Punahou High School. They’ll have to make dramatic improvement over their 13th place Hermosa Beach and seventh place Huntington Beach finishes to claim a title in Santa Barbara.
There are several other top teams looking for their first Santa Barbara win this weekend.
Fonoimoana and Holdren are top contenders to win. Fonoimoana, a Hermosa Beach resident, will have to make the 100 mile drive “up” the coast (it’s really more West than North) but will be in familiar territory. Fonoimoana, the 1998 King of the Beach, graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara where he earned All-American and Most Valuable Player honors while playing for the Gouchos volleyball team. Holdren grew up in and currently resides in Santa Barbara. He’ll have plenty of local fans cheering him on for a repeat of the Fonoimoana/Holdren Huntington Beach victory. In Hermosa, they took a disappointing fifth place finish after losing to Scott Ayakatubby and Brian Lewis.
Lewis pulled a leg muscle in Hermosa so Ayakatubby entered the Santa Barbara tournament with Casey Jennings. Ayakatubby has 18 past wins with five different partners including a win last year in Huntington Beach with Eduardo (Anjinho) Bacil. This is the first time Ayakatubby plays with the promising young rising player Jennings. Jennings, who played for Brigham Young University, began his AVP career in earnest in 2000 and has shown steady improvement since. Last weekend in Hermosa, Jennings, partnered with Brad Torsone upset Canyon Ceman and Mike Whitmarsh, 26-28, 21-13, and 15-9. Jennings and Torsone handed Ceman and Whitmarsh a bitterly disappointing ninth place finish in Hermosa and Jennings made his first ever Sunday appearance where he finished a career high seventh. Expect Ceman/Whitmarsh to avenge their Hermosa disappointment in Santa Barbara and challenge others for the tournament title. They’ll probably have to go through last week’s Hermosa Beach winners, Hannemann and Nygaard.Anjinho and Fred Souza, who placed third in Hermosa and gave Doble/Kiraly their fifth place finish, are entered in the field contending for this weekend’s title. Carrie Busch and Leanne Schuster each have one career victory and that was a title win together in Hermosa Beach in 2000. They improved on their 2002 Huntington Beach fifth place finish with a third in last week’s Hermosa Beach event. Their only losses in these two tournaments were to the top teams of Youngs/McPeak, Fontana/DeNecochea, and Davis/Johnson Jordan. They have actually beat Hanley/Arce twice this year. Don’t be surprised to see Busch and Schuster in the final-four again this Sunday in Santa Barbara. Katy Eldridge and Jen Meredith placed fifth in Hermosa. Meredith, playing with Wendy Stammer, was in last year’s Santa Barbara final but lost to Masakayan/DeNecochea. Eldridge and Meredith showed some inconsistency before Hermosa, taking a 13th in Huntington Beach after losing to Stephanie Cox and Jen Holdren (Dax Holdren’s wife). Eldridge and Meredith may challenge other teams to make it to Sunday’s final-four play but there is a “new” team they might have to contend with.Nancy Mason and Rachel Wacholder are reunited for Santa Barbara. They played together through all of 2000 and finished as high as second place in that year’s Hermosa Beach event but haven’t played together since. In 2001, Wacholder took another second place in Clearwater Beach where she partnered with McPeak. This year, neither Mason nor Wacholder have done better than fifth place playing with other partners. Now they have hooked up again to build on their earlier success together.Friday’s Qualifier Tournament (QT) has 55 men’s teams and 42 women’s teams entered. Eight men’s and four women’s teams advance from the QT into Saturday’s Main Draw competition bringing the total of men’s Main Draw teams to 32 and the women’s Main Draw teams to 24 to begin Saturday play. The AVP 2002 Michelob Light Santa Barbara Open Presented by Paul Mitchell is set for broadcast on both the Oxygen Network and Fox Sports Network with Chris Marlowe, the 1997 Santa Barbara Open winner with Jim Menges, and Heather Cox announcing.