TKN, Mel & Brandie awarded AVP League wild cards
Pro beach: Superstar pairs won't have to qualify for the summer series; no free pass to men's duos
The field for the AVP League series this summer became more filled when the AVP awarded wild-card entries to two women’s superstar pairs — USA Olympians Taryn Brasher and Kristen Nuss and Canadian Olympic silver medalists Melissa Humana-Parades and Brandie Wilkerson.
Brasher (nee Kloth) and Nuss were assigned to the Austin Aces, while Mel and Brandie were placed on the Palm Beach Passion. Both duos competed for those teams during the League’s inaugural season last fall. Neither squad advanced to the postseason so their pairs did not qualify for automatic entry to the 2025 League.
The wild cards for arguably the two most popular women’s pairs in the AVP were announced over social media by the AVP. Its post noted that no men’s duos would be granted wild-card entry to the eight League teams.
The League will have eight regular-season dates, starting on May 23-24 with the Palm Beach stop in South Florida and continuing through August 8-9. The League Championship will be contested on Labor Day Weekend in Chicago.
Pairs from the four-team 2024 playoffs that stayed together were given an exemption from the qualifying process. Returning on the women’s side are Toni Rodriguez and Geena Urango of the League champion San Diego Thrill and presumably Hailey Harward and Kylie Deberg of the runner-up Dallas Dream, although I have noted no formal announcement from Harward or Deberg and both took different partners during the offseason.
Harward played in the recent world-tour Challenge event in the Yucatan Mexico with 6-foot-5 Molly Phillips, qualifying for the 32-team main draw but failing to advance out of pool-play for a 25th-place finish. Deberg and Rodriguez took a fifth in the Yucatan Challenge then were 19th as the 11th seeds last weekend in the top-tier Elite tournament in Quintana Roo.
The other women’s pairs in the 2024 League playoffs were April Ross and Alix Klineman, both of whom have retired, and Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes. Cheng has taken Molly Shaw as her partner after Hughes tore her Achilles tendon and they will have to qualify for one of the remaining open spots. Cheng-Shaw made a strong debut in Quintana Roo, advancing to the medal rounds before losing in the semifinals to Megan Kraft and Terese Cannon and to TKN in the bronze-medal match.
The three-tournament qualifying process for the League begins April 12 (next Saturday) with the first of two no-prize-money single-elimination tournaments on Huntington Beach in Southern California. The winners of each of those qualifiers — the second is on April 26 and each will be limited to 16 teams in each gender — will earn spots in the League, as will the champions of the AVP Heritage Series Huntington Beach event on May 10 and 11, one of only two traditional bracket-style tourneys on the AVP schedule.
A points system encompassing the three will fill out the spots left in the League, with a stipulation that pairs have to play in at least two, one being the full-fledged AVP event.
A conflict with the international tour’s Saquarema Elite stop in Brazil kept obvious League candidates Brasher-Nuss, Mel-Brandie, Kraft-Cannon, Cheng-Shaw and Maddie Anderson-Brooke Bauer from signing up for the qualifier on April 12. The first four almost certainly will be seeded into the Saquarema top 16 and Anderson-Bauer figure to make the cut in the 16-pair qualifier.
Among the men, three duos are grandfathered into the League from the 2024 playoffs: USA Olympians Chase Budinger and Miles Evans (Smash), USA Olympians Miles Partain and Andy Benesh (who went 10-0) of the Dream and the hugely popular pair of Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander (New York Nitro). Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, who played for the Miami Mayhem, have split up and will have to qualify with new partners.
Four-time Manhattan Beach Open champion Trevor Crabb has joined forces with all-time great Phil Dalhausser, a four-time USA Olympian and the 2008 Olympic gold medalist, in a “Dream Team.” Brunner, 40, who has indicated he wants to wind down his career, has teamed with Troy Field. Other logical contenders for the five open spots are Chaim Schalk-James Shaw, Tim Bomgren-Paul Lotman (both of whom competed in the inaugural League), Brazilian veterans Alison Cerutti-Alvara Filho, Tri Bourne-Evan Cory and Cody Caldwell- Ryan Wilcox.
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