Beach volleyball in the Intuit Dome? AVP players embrace their new digs
Devon Newberry is closing in on two years in the professional beach volleyball circuit. Yet for all 731 days, 'professional' has felt like an elusive label.
The former UCLA standout is accustomed to hauling her equipment on the beach, tugging her bag across the uneven sand while weaving through sunbathers and surfboards. The provisional bleachers creak under sunscreen-slathered fans while music might buzz through a nearby portable speaker.
Advertisement
There's charm in that chaos. But it's nothing like the entrance Newberry made Friday at the Intuit Dome.
Above her, the sweeping halo scoreboard glowed, flashing beneath the thump of blasting pop anthems. Around her, where NBA chants once echoed, beach volleyball fans cheered. And strangest of all, tons of sand created a faux indoor shoreline.
After two years chasing it, Newberry found her label.
Read more: 300 tons of sand trucked into Intuit Dome to create unique AVP beach volleyball venue
'I walked into the Intuit Dome today and I was like, 'I feel like a professional athlete walking in,'' Newberry said. 'I haven't felt like that as a beach player. There's very rare moments when you're like, 'Wow, I am really a professional athlete.' And when I was going underground here and looking all around me, I was like, 'I really am a professional athlete.' And that's because we're playing at the Intuit Dome.'
Advertisement
In what began as a head-scratcher for the players themselves, 300 tons of sand were poured into the Intuit Dome, turning the Clippers' arena into a pop-up beach — where the L.A. Launch kept their perfect run afloat for the start of AVP League Week 5.
The Launch struck first and last — with Megan Kraft and Terese Cannon opening with a win, and Hagen Smith and Logan Webber closing it out — both pairs dismantling the San Diego Smash. Sandwiched between those victories, Palm Beach Passion's men's and women's teams both made quick work of the Miami Mayhem.
The moment Newberry described — descending into an NBA arena re-imagined as a sand-strewn battleground — was the AVP's moonshot: to re-imagine the sport in lights, not solely sunlight.
'Playing in such an amazing place, brand new building, with everything going on, with the new building around here, it's really cool,' said 2016 Olympian Chaim Schalk. 'To get to play at such an iconic arena is an honor.'
Logan Webber of the L.A. Launch spikes over Chase Budinger of the San Diego Smash at the Intuit Dome on Friday night.
(Joe Scarnici / Getty Images)
Beach volleyball rarely has ventured beyond its coastal roots. But at the Intuit Dome, the sport embraced a new direction.
Advertisement
'This shows that beach volleyball is growing and it's trying to adapt to the world we live in, finding a new way for fans to interact with the players, and new ways for the sport to be exciting,' said Chase Budinger, a former NBA player who became a beach volleyball player. 'This will get more people in the stands because it's so new and so different.'
In place of sun-worshiping fans camped out on makeshift bleachers, parents lounged on cushioned seats as kids nestled beside them balancing chicken wings and pizzas on their laps.
The sport welcomed a combination of newcomers hunting for Friday night entertainment and AVP devotees.
'There's so many people who love beach volleyball, and so many people who would love beach volleyball if they were just given the opportunity to go watch,' Newberry said. 'And not everybody can make it out.'
Advertisement
Read more: How Chase Budinger went from the NBA to playing beach volleyball in the Olympics
Change comes with tradeoffs. With no wind, the court became something of a power chamber — the compact sand lending itself to higher and cleaner jumps, the still air enabling blistering serves and monstrous spikes that might have drifted wide on the beach.
Rallies became quicker and tighter. The margin for error shrank, tightening the grip on the crowd.
'For a lot of people watching beach volleyball for the first time, it's really hard to conceptualize how wind, how deep the sand is, might affect play,' Newberry said. 'So it feels like more of an even playing field which allows everybody to watch really entertaining volleyball.'
Advertisement
By re-imagining the boundaries of where its sport can potentially thrive, the AVP might have sketched out a novel blueprint for other sports.
'I wouldn't be surprised if other sports follow and start expanding their ideas of where they could play,' said Olympic silver medalist Brandie Wilkerson. 'I'm excited to see where this is going to go and see other sports try to catch up.'
Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Shohei Ohtani's two-run home run (34)
Shohei Ohtani hits a two-run home run to left field, his 34th of the season, extending the Dodgers' lead to 3-0 in the 3rd inning
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
JC Tretter resigns from NFL Players Association
First, Lloyd Howell. Now, JC Tretter. In a lengthy interview that was posted earlier this hour, Tretter tells Jonathan Jones of that Tretter is resigning from the NFL Players Association. The former union president had returned last year, as the NFLPA's chief strategy officer. "Over the last couple days, it has gotten very, very hard for my family," Tretter said. "And that's something I can't deal with. So, the short bullet points are: I have no interest in being [executive director]. I have no interest in being considered; I've let the executive committee know that. I'm also going to leave the NFLPA in the coming days because I don't have anything left to give the organization." But Tretter was a candidate to become the interim executive director. And Pablo Torre's reporting pointed to a broader strategy by Tretter to eventually succeed Lloyd Howell as the full-time, non-interim leader of the union. "I want to get my story out there, and I don't want it to look like this was sour grapes or I didn't get the job and I wanted the job," Tretter said. "All I want to do is tell my story and then go be with my family." He did indeed get his story out there. It comes off as a one-way effort from Tretter to provide his version on anything and everything, with little if any pointed questions or followup. "I'm not resigning because what I've been accused of is true," Tretter said. "I'm not resigning in disgrace. I'm resigning because this has gone too far for me and my family, and I've sucked it up for six weeks. And I felt like I've been kind of left in the wind taking shots for the best of the organization. . . . "I got to the point this morning where I woke up and I realized, like, I am going to keep dying on this fucking sword forever of, I'll never, ever be able to do what's best for me. And I will always pick what's best for the organization. And in the end, what's the organization done for me? Like, nothing. "I've been a bullet shield for six weeks for them where everything that's been controversial, it just all dumps down on me, and I've had nothing to fucking do with it. And that's when I was like, I'm done taking bullets for the [organization] on stuff I wasn't a part of and did not do." Or course, he did badmouth Russell Wilson after he failed to get a fully-guaranteed deal. (Tretter says he called Wilson a "fucking loser" in a text message to former NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.) Also, Tretter suggested that disgruntled players should fake injuries, sparking a grievance the NFLPA lost in a slam-dunk ruling. So his hands aren't entirely clean. Even without the application of any elbow grease as to the various positions he took in his comments to CBS. Either way, now ends Tretter's time with the union. Since the NFLPA didn't previously have a chief strategy officer, it may not replace him. For now, the primary challenge becomes hiring an interim executive director.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Guardians aren't interested in change after President Trump calls for them, Commanders to go back to old offensive nicknames
The Cleveland Guardians sound very good with their decision to rebrand, even after President Donald Trump randomly called for them to revert back to the old 'Indians' nickname on Sunday. Trump made a long post on Truth Social on Sunday calling for both the Guardians and the NFL's Washington Commanders to revert back to their old team names. He even threatened to block the Commanders' impending move back to D.C. and their new stadium if they failed to do so. While not mentioning Trump by name, Guardians president Chris Antonetti made it clear they aren't interested in moving backward on Sunday. 'I understand there are very different perspectives on the decision we made a few years ago, but it's a decision we made and we've gotten the opportunity to build the brand as the Guardians over the last four years and we're excited about the future that's in front of us,' he said, via The Athletic. The Commanders have not addressed Trump's post. The Guardians officially changed their team name ahead of the 2022 season, shortly after they stopped using the old 'Chief Wahoo' logo, which many saw as racist and offensive toward Native Americans. The Commanders retired their old 'Redskins' nickname in 2020. They went by the Washington Football Team briefly before landing on the Commanders. Their old nickname, which had been in use since 1933, was widely seen as an offensive slur and drew plenty of criticism in its final years of use. 'For obvious reasons,' Commanders owner Josh Harris said in August, that can't return. 'I think [Commanders] is now embraced by our team, by our culture, by our coaching staff,' he said earlier this year, via ESPN. 'So we're going with that.' Though it's unclear if the threat of blocking their stadium deal, real or not, will sway the Commanders, both Harris and Antonetti seem very content with their franchises' new names.
