Beach volleyball in the Intuit Dome? AVP embraces

Devon Newberry is closing in on two years as a skilled seashore volleyball participant. Yet for the final 731 days, “professional” has all the time felt like an elusive label.

The former UCLA standout is accustomed to life as a seashore volleyball participant — hauling her gear on the seashore, tugging her bag across the uneven sand while weaving through sunbathers and surfboards. She’s used to listening to provisional bleachers creak under sunscreen-slathered followers as music buzzes through close by transportable audio system.

There’s allure 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, seashore volleyball followers cheered. And strangest of all, tons of sand created a fake indoor shoreline.

After two years chasing it, Newberry discovered her label.

“I walked into the Intuit Dome today and I was like, ‘I feel like a professional athlete walking in,’” Newberry stated. “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.”

In what started as a head-scratcher for the gamers themselves, 300 tons of sand had been poured into the Intuit Dome, turning the Clippers’ enviornment into a pop-up seashore — where the L.A. Launch saved their good run afloat for the begin of AVP League Week 5.

The Launch struck first and final — 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 males’s and girls’s groups both made fast work of the Miami Mayhem.

The second Newberry described — descending into an NBA enviornment re-imagined as a sand-strewn battleground — was the AVP’s moonshot: to re-imagine the sport in lights, not solely daylight.

“Playing in such an amazing place, brand new building, with everything going on, with the new building around here, it’s really cool,” stated 2016 Olympian Chaim Schalk. “To get to play at such an iconic arena is an honor.”

Beach volleyball hardly ever has ventured past its coastal roots. But at the Intuit Dome, the sport embraced a new direction.

“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,” stated Chase Budinger, a former NBA participant who turned a seashore volleyball participant. “This will get more people in the stands because it’s so new and so different.”

In place of sun-worshiping followers camped out on makeshift bleachers, mother and father lounged on cushioned seats as youngsters nestled beside them balancing chicken wings and pizzas on their laps.

The sport welcomed a mixture of newcomers searching for Friday evening leisure 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 stated. “And not everybody can make it out.”

Change comes with tradeoffs. With no wind, the court turned one thing of a energy chamber — the compact sand lending itself to larger and cleaner jumps, the still air enabling blistering serves and monstrous spikes that might need drifted vast on the seashore.

Rallies turned faster 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 stated. “So it feels like more of an even playing field which allows everybody to watch really entertaining volleyball.”

By re-imagining the boundaries of where its sport can doubtlessly thrive, the AVP might need sketched out a novel blueprint for different sports activities.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if other sports follow and start expanding their ideas of where they could play,” stated Olympic silver medalist Brandie Wilkerson. “I’m excited to see where this is going to go and see other sports try to catch up.”