Good morning SANDCAST fans and happy Friday!

Welcome back to the SANDCAST beach volleyball digest. This week, we have the beginning of what is likely to be a lot of partnership speculation — in the case of the AVP — and actual partnership shuffling — as is the case on the World Tour, as new teams will be making their debuts at the upcoming Itapema four-star.

This week on the podcast, with the help of our monthly co-host, Savvy Simo, we answered as many fan questions as we could in a little more than an hour.

The most recurring question, of course: Who’s going to play with whom in 2022?

We did our best to answer.

The World Tour begins to realign

While no new partnerships have officially been formed on the AVP, the World Tour has already begun its shuffle. The vast majority of teams — new and old alike — are sitting out of the upcoming Itapema four-star, but several new ones will be making their debuts. Mewhirter wrote about the new teams who will be competing in Itapema fo the first time.

Country quota upcoming in Manhattan Beach

While on the topic of Itapema, any California-based American fans should note that the final country quota of the year — and likely ever, as the new three-tiered system is supposedly doing away with country quotas — will take place on Tuesday, October 26 in Manhattan Beach, from 9 a.m.-noon. The teams competing, should nothing change from now until Tuesday, are:

It is unlikely to be streamed, so if you want to watch, you’ll have to do it live.

Laguna Beach Open is back this weekend

The country quota will not be streamed, but this weekend’s Laguna Beach Open will be streamed on its Facebook page. But, if you’re in town this weekend, you should absolutely go. It has one of the best vibes of any tournament Mewhirter has played — right up there with Seaside and Fuds — and the beach is absolutely stunning. The fields are smaller this year — 12 men’s, 12 women’s — so there shouldn’t be many lopsided matches.

The field is a bit light, as the McKibbin/SharpeVision four-man has pulled many of the top talents down to Austin, but still: It’ll be a high-level weekend, and probably the last high-level weekend for quite some time.

Preciate chy’all

Thanks, as always, for reading, listening, watching. And thanks to all who have bought pieces of SANDCAST merchandise! We love you, and would love to see some pictures of you rocking our stuff so we can put it up on the site! If you’re looking for some merch, head over to our merchandise store and start scooping up some SANDCAST swag 🙂

Have a great week, all.

SHOOTS!

Tri and Travis