A year ago, at this very tournament in Rio de Janeiro, Carol Salgado and Barbara Seixas turned back the clocks, a pair of 37-year-old Olympians with nearly 400 combined tournaments in their professional beach volleyball careers who would triumph over a field replete with women much younger. The opponent they’d face in their final three matches was a 28-year-old named Terese Cannon who hadn’t made a single cent in her career while Barbara was winning her Olympic silver medal at the 2016 Olympic Games.
Age, they proved, was just a number. Barbara and Carol won their final gold medal as a team, and Barbara subsequently retired, a perfect ending to one of this game’s most brilliant careers. One month later, their contemporary, Agatha Bednarczuk, retired as well, calling it an indelible career at the Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha, Qatar.
In the span of a month, then, Brazil’s beach volleyball royalty had but one active member remaining: Carol Salgado.
One year later, she’s proven she can carry the weight of the crown.
Amidst a generation teeming with young talent — Ana Patricia and Duda, Thamela Coradello and Victoria Lopes, Vitoria De Souza and Hegeile Almeida Dos SAntos, Taina Silva and Andressa Cavalcanti, all of whom are ranked in the top 25 in the world — Carol has seamlessly filled the role of peerless veteran, queen of the exorbitantly gifted Brazilian federation. On Sunday evening, she and Rebecca Cavalcanti outlasted their younger counterparts in world No. 1 Thamela and Victoria, 18-21, 21-18, 15-11, an all-Brazilian final in front of the sport’s most supportive fan base.
In a year in which she has become the all-time leader in Beach Pro Tour tournaments played (228), with the next closest active player on that list nearly 100 events behind (Anouk Verge-Depre has played 137), she isn’t just playing for playing’s sake. She’s winning, hauling in two Elite gold medals and another silver in 2025 alone, racing up to No. 2 in the world rankings. In Rio, she led the tournament in points scored, total kills, blocks, and was No. 7 in aces.
She is making a case as not just the ironwoman of beach volleyball, but one of the best active players in it.
A year ago, Agatha and Barbara passed the torch.
Carol is holding it high as ever.
Victoria Lopes and Thamela Coradello celebrate a semifinal victory/Volleyball World photo
Brazil’s Perfect Revenge in Rio
One week ago, a contingent of USA Volleyball women descended upon Joao Pessoa, Brazil and made a statement, winning nine of 14 matches against Brazil on Brazil’s home turf, including a pair of semifinals that set up an All-American final that surely left a raucous home crowd starving for anything but that.
At this week’s Elite in Rio de Janeiro, another packed-to-the-gills home crowd got what they deserved this week: A pair of tremendous rivalry semifinals, pitting the USA vs. Brazil for the second straight week, only this time, it resulted in an All-Brazilian gold medal match the Joao Pessoa faithful so wanted.
World No. 1 Thamela Coradello and Victoria Lopes hung on to beat Joao Pessoa gold medalists Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw, 21-14, 20-22, 15-13 to make their fourth final of the year, while perpetual lucky losers Carol Salgado and Rebecca Cavalcanti made good on their second life — more on that below — in sweeping Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft, 21-15, 25-23.
A coach on site summed it up best, admitting, simply: Good for Brazil.
Indeed. The country with the sport’s most loyal and effusive fans deserved this. They have helped propel the women’s home teams to six medals in four Elites this season.
When that final did come along, they were left in a champagne quandary: Which home team to root for? The veterans in Olympians Carol and Rebecca, or the youngsters taking the Beach Pro Tour by storm in Thamela and Victoria?
Didn’t matter.
Brazil won, literally and figuratively.
Cherif and Ahmed celebrate a gold medal at the Rio Elite/Volleyball World photo
Qatar roars back from injury with gold medal at Rio Elite
Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan are not from Brazil. They represent Qatar, a country more than 6,000 miles away.
Yet Brazil, and Rio de Janeiro, is where Cherif feels most at home.
“This place, for me, has always been a great place because this is the place that I played my first Olympics,” the three-time Olympian said. “We played here and the whole place was supporting us. You guys make us feel home here. Every time we play, no matter who, besides Brazil, these guys from Cuba, we are your favorite team to support. I understand you. It’s beach volleyball who won.”
Anybody who managed to snag a seat in Rio or watch from home on VBTV did, indeed, win during the final, pitting Qatar vs. Cuba’s Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz, a 21-14, 17-2, 18-16 victory for Qatar that is an instant nomination for match of the year. And while we all won, it was Cherif and Ahmed who stood atop the podium for the third time this season, adding another to their wins in Xiamen and Gstaad.
The silver marks the second medal of Cuba’s season, and first since winning gold in Quintana Roo in March. But the silver is almost a footnote compared to a single match win in their quarterfinal, against Anders Mol and Christian Sorum.
Jorge Alayo hits is past Anders Mol/Volleyball World photo
Holy sh** Cuba: A look into their third set blowout of Norway
Had you been tuning into VBTV — and if you want a discount, use our code SANDCAST10 to do so! — on Saturday evening, you would have seen something that has never happened: Norway getting positively obliterated in the third set of a quarterfinal, said obliterating kudos to a literally perfect performance from Cuba’s Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz.
Mol and Sorum have played 71 tournaments together over a span of 10 years. They have lost just 76 total matches, a number that includes forfeits.
They have never lost a match like they did on Saturday afternoon in Rio de Janeiro.
Norway and Cuba traded tremendous beach volleyball in the opening sets, Mol and Sorum winning the first, 23-21, Cuba winning the second, 21-19. It suggested another belter to come. What came was nothing less than shocking: A 15-5 blowout, the most lopsided loss in Mol and Sorum’s career as partners.
What happened?
Better question: What didn’t?
There were blocks. Errors. Oversets. Transition digs and putaways. Everything that could have gone right for Cuba went right, and everything that could have gone wrong for Norway went wrong. In a radical change of strategy from every other team since 2018, when Mol and Sorum first ascended to No. 1 in the world, Cuba went straight at Mol, serving him all but one ball (Sorum sided out his lone attempt). Mol sided out just two of 11 attempts and hit four errors. As for Cuba? They sided out 100 percent, hit 100 percent in transition, passed with 100 percent efficiency and blocked three balls in the third set.
That’s as perfect as it gets.
For the match, Cuba sided out 71% to Norway’s 56, hit 56% in transition to Norway’s 38, made 7 errors to Norway’s 18, and blocked 8 balls to Norway’s 7.
It does not get much better.
Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot celebrate another bronze medal/Volleyball World photo
Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot will have a statue made of bronze one day
For the fourth straight tournament and fifth time this season, Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot have won a bronze medal. They beat Latvia’s Martins Plavins and Kristians Fokerots, 17-21, 21-17, 15-11 — the same team they met for bronze a month ago in Hamburg — on back-to-back blocks from Boermans to seal the medal and another podium. They have now medaled in six out of seven Elites this season, a consistency that puts them as the leaders for most medals of any team in the world.
That is as impressive as it gets in 2025.
Neither Boermans and de Groot could help themselves after the win, both muttering something to the effect of being sick of bronze or hating bronze. No kid dreams of winning bronze medals, but medals are no easy feat, and to have six of them in a single season is remarkable.
Martins Plavins scoops a dig in his favorite venue/Volleyball World photo
Martins Plavins, Rio de Janeiro, and the most beautiful relationship
Not unlike Arya Stark, Martins Plavins had a hit list in 2024. I’m not sure if he muttered their names every night before he went to bed, as young Stark did in Game of Thrones, but he had a mission, and his mission was to take out the Paris Olympic podium: Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler, and Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum. He and Kristians Fokerots stunned the Germans at the European Championships, a momentous win and one that would, under any other circumstance, be the highlight of a career, much less a season.
He wasn’t done. He had two names left on his list.
He took them both out in a single tournament, sweeping Ahman and Hellvig in the quarterfinals and prevailing in three over Mol and Sorum for bronze.
He hasn’t won a medal since (unless you count a gold at a home Futures event in Jurmala), and, prior to this week in Rio de Janeiro, had just one semifinal in 2025, in Hamburg, Germany.
But Rio is where all is right for Plavins. It is, after all, where he won a U21 World Championship with Aleksandrs Samoilovs — exactly 20 years ago. He is the only player in that field who is still competing today. So the fact that he and Fokerots made another semifinal here, being the heels to the tremendous run made by USA Volleyball’s Chase Budinger and Miles Evans in the quarterfinals, should come as no surprise.
He didn’t win a medal, no, falling to Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot, the bronze kings, but in three out of four trips to Rio, he has a gold, a bronze, and another semifinal to show for it.
Plavins is Rio. Rio is Plavins.
Melissa Humana-Paredes/Volleyball World photo
Mel and Brandie: The Beach Pro Tour’s… unluckiest winners?
At the beginning of the season, the Beach Pro Tour unveiled a new format for its Elite tournaments that confused folks then and continues confusing folks today. It involves a round of playoffs in which two teams who lose will subsequently advance into the quarterfinals based on point differential. These teams are referred to as lucky losers, and the fact that they exist remains one of the strangest things I’ve seen in sports.
That said, the system is the system. Some teams have capitalized on it — Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft have thrice taken advantage, losing in the round of 12 in Quintana Roo, Brasilia, and Joao Pessoa, and came away with two medals because of it; Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot have done so twice in a row, coming back after losses in Joao Pessoa and Rio to win a bronze medal in both.
And some teams have been absolutely crushed by it.
None moreso than Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson. Two tournaments in a row now, Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson have swept their first three opponents, making it into the quarterfinals with a massive point differential in their favor. They have then met a team who lost in the round of 12 and was brought back into the tournament with nothing to lose. Those teams — Cannon and Kraft in Joao Pessoa, Carol Salgado and Rebecca Cavalcanti in Rio — have then beaten Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson, and Canada has finished fifth both times.
This is just the latest string of bad luck for the Beach Pro Tour’s unluckiest winners. Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson had the same happen to them in Brasilia, where they lost to Carol and Rebecca, and Ostrava, where Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova swept them after losing in the round of 12. That’s four times in seven Elites in which Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson have been knocked out by a team who under any other format in any other sport would have already been knocked out.
Chase Budinger serves at the Rio Elite/Volleyball World photo
Chase Budinger, Miles Evans providing life for USA Volleyball men
In a year that has been almost entirely without a podium for USA Volleyball, Chase Budinger and Miles Evans have injected quite a bit of life into the federation in the last two months. A fourth-place finish at the Baden Challenge preceded a win at the Manhattan Beach Open which preceded a third-place finish at the Hermosa Open which preceded a flattening of Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger and Leo Dillier in the first round of pool play in Joao Pessoa, all of which preceded their finest Beach Pro Tour tournament of the year, in Rio de Janeiro. Budinger and Evans became the first USA Volleyball team to beat Anders Mol and Christian Sorum in more than a year when they shocked the Norwegians to win pool in Rio, and they looked the part, controlling the entire match. They held on in a thriller against the surging George Wanderley and Saymon Barbosa to make the quarterfinals before falling to the most charmed man in Rio, Martins Plavins, to take fifth.
It matches their top finish in an Elite, and marks their best since the Espinho Elite last May, where they finished fifth out of the qualifier (and also beat George, then playing with Andre Loyola).
Saymon and George are fired up with their recent run/Volleyball World photo
George Wanderley, Saymon Barbosa keep World Champs hopes alive
Three weeks ago, it wouldn’t have been wrong to say that George Wanderley and Saymon Barbosa were all but out of time to qualify for the World Championships later this fall in Adelaide. With just three events remaining — Elites in Joao Pessoa and Rio de Janeiro and a Challenge in Veracruz, Mexico — the Brazilians had shown little signs of being able to make a consistent run through tournaments. Their best finish in an Elite was 19th, and only once, at a Challenge in Alanya, Turkey, where they captured a bronze out of the qualifier, had they displayed an ability to sustain a high level of play through Sunday. But playing in Brazil is different for Brazilian teams, and George and Saymon delivered another blow to the Bello Brothers in the qualifier, winning 21-19, 18-21, 16-14 to make the main draw, and they’d display that type of grit all weekend. All five matches they played in Rio de Janeiro went to three, and they won three of them, including an upset over Alex Brouwer and Steven van De Velde and another over Norway’s Hendrik Mol and Mathias Berntsen.
Now, with consecutive ninths on the ledger in the last two weeks, George and Saymon have climbed from outside of the top 30 to directly on the bubble with that final Challenge in Veracruz this weekend. Better yet, they’re straight into the main draw for the first time all season in a Challenge. Given how top-heavy their finishes have been, they’d add points with a fifth or better. Not an easy task, but not nearly as difficult as doing so in an Elite.
At the very least, they’ve made the race a must-watch on the final weekend of the qualifying period.
Miles Partain/Volleyball World photo
Andy Benesh and Miles Partain looking to rediscover their spark
When we hosted Miles Partain on the podcast in May of 2023, he called his gift to play this game of beach volleyball a “spark from God.”
“The spark just comes from God,” he said then. “You can’t really control it that much. Curiosity is a special gift and you can fan it into flame.”
A proper fanning would be welcome at the moment, as Partain and Andy Benesh look, at best, flat on the court. They aren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last, team to have a post-Olympic lull of a year — see: Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler, David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, Ana Patricia and Duda, etc, in 2025 alone. But they were lifeless in a lopsided loss to Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger and Leo Dillier, squeaked by Chilean qualifiers Fernando Quintero and Vicente Droguett, and showed little of that aforementioned spark in a sweep loss to Australia’s Mark Nicolaidis and Izach Carracher.
It’s a wonder what goes on, because when they play well, as they did in Huntington Beach earlier this year, there is little doubt they’re a top-five team in the world. But whereas that was the norm in 2023 and 2024, it has been the exception in a season with just a single quarterfinal thus far on the Beach Pro Tour.
Their numbers in all but the sideout category are telling. While their sideout percentage has actually increased, from 65 to 66 from 2024 to 2025, their transition rate has dropped from 52% to 44%. Meanwhile, they have hit 235 errors to their opponents’ 182 on the season, an alarming jump after hitting 333 to their opponents’ 341 in 2024.
What’s the cause? Hard to tell. Could be the post-Olympic malaise. Could be something else. Could be nothing other than other teams making adjustments. Could be a million things.
Still, in a poll on our YouTube Channel, 70% of listeners and viewers still trust Partain and Benesh to win more than any other USA Volleyball team. And, when it comes down to it, the one tournament in which they’d need a spark, the World Championships in November, is still months away.
No need to peak, or spark, just yet.
Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft celebrate at the Rio Elite/Volleyball World photo
Terese Cannon is officially one of the best option players in the world
“Terese Cannon is the best option player in the world.”
I made the above statement while on the call for Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft’s round of 12 matchup against Brazil’s Carol Salgado and Rebecca Cavalcanti. I said it without really thinking or inspecting it prior to it simply coming out of my mouth — as it goes with virtually everything I say on air — but, upon further inspection, I don’t think I’m crazy for having wondered it.
At the time I said it, Cannon was 99 for 135 on two for the year in side out, per BeachData, a whopping 73%. In transition, where scoring is much more difficult, Cannon is 147-231, a 64% rate that can be modestly described as world class.
How does that compare to Kelly Cheng, the most fearless on-two player in the world, who options more than anyone on the planet? A full 50 percent of Cheng’s attacks in side out have come on an option, and she’s siding out 67%, a tremendous clip even when not taking into account the immense difficulty of many of Cheng’s options. Cheng is far more aggressive, with a bigger range, than Cannon, as the sheer volume of percentages shows. She’s that aggressive in transition as well, with 51% of her attacks in transition coming on options, and she’s putting those away at a 71% clip, which is, simply, absurd.
Less aggressive, but most efficient, is Latvia’s Tina Graudina. She picks her spots exceptionally well, typically when a blocker is running up, and she’s putting away 77% of her on-two attempts in serve receive, the highest of any player in the world. In transition, however, that number drops to 58%, still an impressive rate, and something any coach would circle as an opportunity to do more, but not quite the 71% of Cheng or 64% of Cannon.
In that conversation as well is Canada’s Brandie Wilkerson, whose on-two attacks account for 40 percent of her sideout attempts, coming in at a 69% clip. In transition, she’s a clean 62%. Not supremely dominant or overwhelming like a Cheng, but hyper-efficient in her work.
Between those four, you have a class of their own when it comes to attacking on two, and Terese Cannon is firmly among them, if not at the top of the list.
James Shaw hits around a block/Volleyball World photo
What has happened to James Shaw and Chaim Schalk?
At the beginning of the year, James Shaw and Chaim Schalk were the toast of the Beach Pro Tour town, the bell of its ball.
Deservedly so.
They popped off in the second event of the year, taking a bronze at the Quintana Roo Elite out of the qualifier, a run that included a stunner over Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig. They blasted the field in a qualifier to get into the AVP League. They looked strong in Ostrava, finishing ninth with a moral victory by pushing Anders Mol and Christian Sorum to the brink in a 21-19, 18-21, 13-15 elimination match.
They haven’t won a match since.
What, then, has happened? What’s wrong?
After another last-place finish in Rio de Janeiro, Schalk and Shaw have lost seven consecutive matches. Five of those matches have gone to three, eight sets have been decided by two, and five sets have gone into extra points. They’re losing by an average of 3.71 points per match; it does not get much closer than that.
They’re not losing ugly. Not getting blown out.
They’re just not winning.
One stat stands out: Errors.
In the first four tournaments of the year, Schalk and Shaw were averaging 11 errors per match. In the last three, that number has jumped to 15. Shaw has 62 errors in the last six matches alone, compared to 73 from opposing teams. It puts him at 195 for the season — 99 more than his partner.
In a statistical analysis I did on the top-10 women’s teams in the world last year, several common denominators stood out. One was this: Not a single team in the top-10 hit more errors than their opponents, and only one was out-blocked. Shaw and Schalk are are being outblocked — 26 to 17 in the last three tournaments — and erring far more, hitting 92 in the last three tournaments to just 73 from their opponents.
In matches that are being decided by 3.71 points, on average, that is eye-opening, while many of their other numbers have remained close to the same. Schalk’s side-out has actually increased by three percent, from 66 to 69, in the last three tournaments, while Shaw’s has dipped from 69 to 63 — still a respectable number, and one that is good enough. In transition, however, they’ve been sloppy at best, scoring on just 43% of their chances, though that hasn’t changed from the beginning to the current quagmire they’re in.
A rosy look at the situation is this: If Schalk and Shaw take better care of their side of the net, they’re a legitimately elite team who belongs on podiums. Transition should be a strength of Schalk’s, not a weakness, and again shouldn’t be a terribly difficult issue to overcome.
A less rosy look is this: They have one tournament to figure it out. Veracruz presents a final opportunity I didn’t anticipate them even needing as a luxury, much less a necessity.
It will be a big weekend in Mexico.
