When Chase Budinger was playing in the NBA, he had a locker room full of teammates who were working together to win and support each other off the court.
Since switching to beach volleyball, it’s always been just him and a single partner.
That’s changing this season on the AVP tour, with a new league format that is bringing a team concept to the two-person game, and with it a home city and a nickname and all of the other trappings of the more traditional team sports.
“It just brings that team atmosphere, that team bonding that is something that I’ve missed from my basketball days,” Budinger said in a recent telephone interview as he moved on from the Paris Olympics to the AVP’s new league.
“It’s something that I kind of feel again, where you’re cheering on your teammates and really have another team’s back,” said Budinger, who played seven years in the NBA before reaching the Olympics in beach volleyball. “It’s really cool, because it’s something so different than normal beach volleyball.”
Although it has long been the most prestigious beach volleyball tour in the United States, the AVP has struggled to find footing in the sand as it tries to carry the sport’s quadrennial Summer Games spotlight through the non-OIympic years.
The new format is an attempt to solve some of the problems that may be hindering the sport’s growth, including shorter matches that are more TV-friendly, and more predictable pairings to capitalize on the name recognition of its biggest stars.
Most visibly, the AVP league departs from traditional beach volleyball, where twosomes traveled and competed for themselves, by teaming a men’s pair with a women’s pair and assigning them a city in the hopes of fostering hometown support. Teams don’t play for tournament titles, but to move up in the season standings and reach the end-of-season championship in Los Angeles Nov. 9-10.
“It’s a total shakeup from what’s been happening for the last few decades,” said Brandie Wilkerson, a Canadian who won the silver medal at the Paris Olympics with Melissa Humana-Paredes; the pair now plays for the AVP’s Palm Beach Passion, teamed up with 2008 gold medalist Phil Dalhausser, and Avery Drost.
“The team camaraderie is interesting,” Wilkerson said. “I’ve never had to really think about another teammate other than Melissa. So that’s been fun and we’re getting into it, we’re getting to know these players better. We get to support each other.”
Other teams include the San Diego Smash, New York Nitro, Dallas Dream, Austin Aces, Miami Mayhem, LA Launch and Brooklyn Blaze. So far, the league has bounced from Los Angeles, where it played in the UCLA Tennis Center, to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.
“Playing cities just like other professional teams do and having big crowds in stadiums — what’s not to like about that?” said Olympic gold medalist Alix Klineman, who plays for Miami.
“It takes time. I don’t think people overnight all became Laker fans,” she said. “It was learning to love the organization and the players, and as they got better, more people became fans. Hopefully this format has the staying power that everybody hopes it does, and then I think fans will get on board.”
The competition heads this weekend to the Honda Center, home of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks. While beach volleyball events are often held away from the shore on trucked-in sand — including in the Champ de Mars under the Eiffel Tower at the 2024 Paris Olympics — existing stadiums offer conveniences that aren’t always possible at Manhattan Beach or Copacabana.
“It feels professional,” said April Ross, a three-time Olympic medalist who won gold in 2021 with Klineman in Tokyo. “We have air conditioned locker rooms, player lounges. I really enjoy those venues.”
It’s different on the court, too, with sets that go up to 15 (instead of 21). The fast-paced play keeps the fans interested, and it doesn’t hurt that the matches can more reliably fit into a TV window. (A traditional beach volleyball match can last from 30-something minutes to well over an hour, meaning a two-match broadcast would time out of a two-hour TV window just when things are most exciting.)
“It’s definitely a big sprint,” Ross said. “It’s intense, I’ll say that. I think it’s fun to watch, and every point matters a lot. Strategically, it’s tough: If you have a slow start there’s not a lot of room for changing your strategy and staging a comeback.”
This year’s season was scheduled in the fall, to build off of the Olympic bump; in 2025 it is expected to move back to the summer. There are three women’s teams from Paris: Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, and Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, as well as the Canadians. The men’s side features both American pairs from the recent Olympics: Budinger and Miles Evans, and Andy Benesh and Miles Partain, and former Olympians such as Dalhausser and Brazil’s Alison.
An AVP spokesman declined to provide attendance figures except to say they have increased each week through the first six events of the season. The players — many of them Southern Californians — say they are hoping that the format helps grow beach volleyball as the sport’s birthplace prepares for the Olympics to return in 2028.
“L.A. has their work cut out for them, to try to top Paris,” Klineman said. “I’m excited for L.A. I think our city has a lot to offer. But we also have to step it up, to do something like Paris.”
