2011 FIVB World Tour Gets Started in Brazil

B.J. Hoeptner Evans
Manager, Media Relations and Publications
Phone: (719) 228-6800
E-Mail: bj.evans@usav.org

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (April 14, 2011) – Ten U.S. beach volleyball teams will head for Brasilia, Brazil, over the next few days to begin the 2011 SWATCH FIVB World Tour.

Competition for some of the U.S. women’s teams will begin April 17 with the country quota matches. Qualifications matches will follow on April 18 with the main draw beginning April 19. The U.S. men will not have any teams in country quota matches, so competition will begin with qualifying on April 19 while the main draw starts April 20.

Much of the pre-tournament focus has been on the reunion of two-time Olympic gold medalists Misty May-Treanor (Santa Monica, Calif.) and Kerri Walsh (San Jose, Calif.). As a team, May-Treanor and Walsh have won the Brazil event four times (they took second in 2001), most recently in 2007. The pair has 77 World Tour gold medals between them.

Although May-Treanor and Walsh will be the highest seeded U.S. women’s team in Brazil, they will not be the top seed in the tournament. They are seeded fifth behind Brazil’s Juliana Felisberta Da Silva and Larissa Franca (1), China’s Chen Xue and Xi Zhang (2), Brazil’s Talita Da Rocha Antunes and Maria Antonelli (3) and Germany’s Sara Goller and Laura Ludwig.

Juliana and Larissa won the Brazil event in 2009 and ’10 as well as 2006. The last time May-Treanor and Walsh played together in an FIVB World Tour event was June 23-28, 2008 in Stavanger, Norway. The team won all four FIVB events it played in that year before going on to Beijing to win its second Olympic gold medal.

The second-seeded U.S. team (10th overall) in the Brazil main draw will be Jen Kessy (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.) and April Ross (Costa Mesa, Calif.), who will be looking to come back from an inconsistent 2010 international season in which they won two gold medals, one silver and two bronze in 15 events. Kessy and Ross will be looking to defend their FIVB Beach World Championship title, which they won in 2009, at the 2011 World Championships on June 13-19 in Rome, Italy.

The third-seeded U.S. women’s team (13th overall) will be Angie Akers (Fort Wayne, Ind.) and Nicole Branagh (Orinda, Calif.). Akers has played the last two seasons with Tyra Turner (Fort Myers Beach, Fla.), who is taking time off due to pregnancy.

Branagh was originally supposed to play this season with Walsh, but joined Akers when Walsh and May-Treanor announced their reunion. Akers and Branagh previously played together on the now-suspended AVP Tour in 2005.

Two other U.S. women’s beach teams will have to play a country quota match on April 17 to advance to the April 18 qualifying round. Lauren Fendrick (Carlsbad, Calif.) and Brooke Hanson (Woodland Hills, Calif.), who recently won the 2011 NORCECA Beach Circuit in Cayman Islands, will have to play Brittany Hochevar (Fowler, Colo.) and Jen Fopma (Bellflower, Calif.), who lost in the quarterfinals of that same event.

Fendrick played the second half of the 2010 FIVB World Tour with Hanson. Their best finish was ninth in Sanya, China. Hanson finished fifth last year in Brazil with partner Lisa Rutledge (Vista, Calif.).

On the men’s side, top-seeded Phil Dalhausser (Ormond Beach, Fla.) and Todd Rogers (Santa Barbara, Calif.) will be looking to maintain the dominance they showed on the 2010 FIVB Tour when they became the first American men’s team to win the SWATCH FIVB World Tour championship since the early 1990s when Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos were the top international team.

Dalhausser and Rogers were named the FIVB’s Team of the Year after capturing nine SWATCH FIVB World Tour titles in 2010, including Grand Slam gold medals in Italy (Rome), Switzerland (Gstaad), Austria (Klagenfurt) and Poland (Stare Jablonki) along with second- and third-place finishes at major events in Russia (Moscow) and Norway (Stavanger), respectively.

Dalhausser and Rogers also fought their way through the consolation bracket to win the 2010 FIVB event in Brazil, becoming first American men’s beach team to win a title in that country since 1996.

Not far behind Dalhausser and Rogers will be the second-seeded U.S. team (fourth overall) of Matt Fuerbringer (Costa Mesa, Calif.) and Nick Lucena (Santa Barbara, Calif.). In their first season as a team in 2010, Fuerbringer and Lucena had one second-place finish and one third in nine tournaments.

The No. 3-seeded U.S. team (sixth overall) in Brazil is 2008 Olympians Jake Gibb (Bountiful, Utah) and Sean Rosenthal (Redondo Beach, Calif.), who had a rough 2010 season internationally and did not medal in 10 events.

The fourth-ranked U.S. team (14th overall) of Casey Jennings (Las Vegas, Nev.) and Kevin Wong (Honolulu, Hawaii) played in two FIVB events together in 2010 and ended up winning the final event in The Hague, Netherlands.

Finally, the newly formed U.S. team of Casey Patterson (Van Nuys, Calif.) and Brad Keenan (Westminster, Calif.) will play in the April 19 qualifying round. 

Complete information about the FIVB World Tour is available on the FIVB web site.

Tags: Angie Akers, April Ross, Beach, Beach Volleyball, Brad Keenan, Casey Jennings, Casey Patterson, FIVB World Tour, Jennifer Kessy, Kerri Walsh, Kevin Wong, Lauren Fendrick, Matt Fuerbringer, Misty May-Treanor, Nick Lucena, Nicole Branagh, Phil Dalhausser, Todd Rogers