Welcome.

SANDCAST is the most-downloaded beach volleyball podcast in the world. Founded in October of 2017 by Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, SANDCAST has published more than 300 episodes and is closing in on 1 million downloads.

Since its inception, SANDCAST has become the most-downloaded volleyball podcast in the United States, Sweden, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland, among others at various times. Episodes have been recorded both domestically and internationally, from Hermosa Beach to Bulgaria, Russia to Myrtle Beach, Mexico to Maryland.

Where Bourne and Mewhirter go, SANDCAST also goes.

More than 30 Olympians have appeared on the show, including the host himself, Tri Bourne, who made his Olympic debut at the 2021 Tokyo Games. Those Olympians have won 23 medals, 13 of which were gold. SANDCAST guests have combined to win over 1,000 AVP tournaments, 232 FIVB tournaments, and 539 FIVB medals

Tri Bourne was raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, living a life of outdoors and sports. He was recruited to play for USC, where he started as a middle blocker for a National Championship runner-up team. His success in SoCal earned him a professional contract indoors in Puerto Rico, where he played for two years before returning to the beach. It was on the beach that he has thrived, winning five AVP titles and seven medals on the FIVB Tour. In eight years as a full-time professional, Bourne has been named the AVP Rookie of the Year (2013), AVP Most Improved (2013), AVP Best Offensive Player (2014), FIVB Rookie of the Year (2014), the AVP Team of the Year (2015, 2023) and AVP MVP (2023).

It has been a journey that hasn’t come without adversity. From 2017-2019, after narrowly missing out on qualifying for the Rio Olympics, Bourne was sidelined with an autoimmune disease. His return has been stronger than anyone could have guessed. After regaining his health, he won the first international event he played, and has since won two more AVP titles, including the famed Manhattan Beach Open. In 2021, Bourne qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games, leading the entire field in hitting percentage.

He is now widely considered the top blocker in the United States, and a favorite to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Mewhirter’s path to beach volleyball is decidedly different than Bourne’s. He did not play volleyball in college, but rather studied journalism at the University of Maryland, with aspirations of being a features writer for Sports Illustrated. Those aspirations took him to Florida, where he stumbled across beach volleyball, then to Southern California, where he became obsessed with it.

In 2017, after publishing his first beach volleyball book, We Were Kings, Mewhirter and Bourne got together and decided to start a podcast.

In the years since, Mewhirter has developed into the leading voice in beach volleyball media. He is now the Beach Volleyball Editor at VolleyballMag.com, as well as a Beach Volleyball Features Writer for Volleyball World, a platform with more than one million subscribers on YouTube and half a million downloads of its eponymous app. His work has been featured in the Best American Sports Writing for the year of 2020. He has written four books on volleyball: We Were Kings, Kings of Summer (with Kent Steffes), Volleyball for Milkshakes (with Tri Bourne) and Playbook of Champions (also with Tri Bourne).

As a player, Mewhirter has seen a similar ascent. He qualified for his first AVP main draw in 2018, and has represented the United States in 15 tournaments on the FIVB, bringing home four medals in the process. Mewhirter is now one of the top-15 ranked players in the United States.