TALLAHASSEE, Florida — I was asked a question today that, somewhat surprisingly, I’ve never been asked before: Why did I leave California to coach at Florida State?

To be honest, some things are just a God thing.

Here me out.

On June 6 of 2024, Delaney informed me that our family would soon be adding its newest member, a member we’d later find out was Harper, and she’d be a beautiful bundle of sleepless joy. Harper was, while not unplanned, perhaps a touch surprising with how quickly she came along.

I wondered if we’d be able to make it work in our teeny, tiny apartment in California, one of the most expensive places on planet Earth, with what I, our sole provider, was bringing in between playing, coaching, writing, podcasting, and commentating.

The math, you might say, wasn’t entirely mathing.

It’s one of the few times in my life I can remember being stressed, to the point that I, and not our 14-month-old son and bleary-eyed wife, was losing the most sleep.

Pray on it, Delaney said.

She had unbridled faith that a new path or opportunity – something — would present itself in its own way.

Exactly seven days later, one did.

My mom was in town. If you must know one thing about my mother, it’s that she loves acai somewhere between her first-born grandson and second-born son. She’s a fiend, an addict, and when she landed at LAX on June 13 of 2024, the first words out of her mouth were – I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point – “What’s that acai place called? The one near the Pier? Something berry?”

Oakberry, yes.

WELL LET’S GO, TRAV!

And so we did.

While we were waiting for those overpriced acai bowls at the something berry place, Nick Lucena walked by.

Nick I and had known each other for a bit, having done, if memory serves correct, three podcasts together, one of which involved whiskey and a deep rabbit hole on how delicious uncrustables are, and what a lifesaver they were to him, Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander at the Tokyo Olympics.

Deep stuff.

We’d coached Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk together and had talked more in the previous six months than we had in probably the first few years we had known each other.

Still: We weren’t close to the point that Nick would stop where he was walking down the Hermosa Pier, hang up on his wife, and make a beeline towards me, waiting there for those overpriced acai bowls with my mom, whom he had never met.

Yet that’s exactly what he did.

He asked if he could talk to me for a sec.

Sure. I loved talking to Nick. Of course.

“Our assistant at Florida State is leaving,” he said, “and I know you’re getting into coaching if you want to come down to Tallahassee?”

He’s direct, Nicholas. Didn’t waste any time. One of the many reasons why I love him.

I told him I’d think about it, that I’d get back to the overpriced acai with my mom and we’d stay in touch. It wasn’t until a few days later, however, that it truly hit me just how outrageously serendipitous that encounter was.

A wink from God, I call moments like those.

Because less than a week after I petitioned God for a little guidance, here I was, offered a full-time job, at a top five program in the country, to assist the winningest coach in NCAA Beach Volleyball, while assisting alongside one of the best defenders to ever play the game, in a career I had only just begun — and, oh, I could still continue doing everything I love doing in the media world, because they saw it as an advantage to the program that one of their coaches would be traveling on the Beach Pro Tour and seeing what the best players in the world are doing.

If my mom doesn’t land that day, I’m not at Oakberry. If I’m not at Oakberry, I’m not running into Nick. If I don’t run into Nick, I’m not at Florida State today.

A God thing, see?

I take coincidences, if you want to call them that (and I don’t), quite seriously.

I could only imagine the look of exasperation upon God’s face if I turned it down. Could hear Him wondering: Well, I got you one of the most coveted coaching jobs, in a place that’s wonderful to raise a young and, ahem — wink wink — growing family, with a coaching staff who will love and respect you and treat you like one of their own, and you… said no?

I didn’t say no.

Within a few weeks, I was signing lots of papers, on a Zoom call with a team that would soon become family to me, preparing to move my family across the country.

So it was God – that’s what I call it, anyway – and the coaches who brought me here.

The next question you might be wondering: What’s made me stay?

Stay tuned.