This feature story on Ed Ratledge originally appeared in DiG Magazine’s summer issue. To subscribe, go to its website here.
He bounced and he bounced, and it’s a wonder how, what with all that adrenaline and nerves built up over 18 years, Ed Ratledge kept his serve within the proper zip code, let alone in bounds in the finals of AVP San Francisco. Yet he did.
And if this were a Hollywood story, the producers would have made it so that Sean Rosenthal passed it and Chase Budinger set it, and then Ratledge would put up that massive block of his, with a wingspan that stretches nearly 7 feet, the same one that earned him the nickname “Eagle,” and he would have blocked Rosenthal to win his first AVP tournament after nearly two decades and 147 events of trying.
But that’s not how these things go. You know that.
And anyway, it just wouldn’t fit the bill.
The final point couldn’t have been so quick, so easy. No, it needed a bit more time, a bit more work, some suspense, some weird, some goofy.
It needed a little more Ed Ratledge in it.
2018 Hermosa Beach Open
Hermosa Beach Pier
Hermosa Beach, CA
6/28/18
Credit: Robert Beck
***
The year 2001. A café in Portugal. That’s where it began for Ratledge.
Well, sort of. He’d always been tall, and a bit of an athlete, and when he showed some promise on the volleyball court at his church as a kid he decided to try out for the Fountain Valley High School, which led to a scholarship at Long Beach State and a transfer to UCLA and a national championship and then a contract in Portugal.
But that’s indoor stuff. That’s history, not much a part of the Ed Ratledge story anymore. That café, though – that’s where it really begins, for it was there that Ratledge read a release about some changes to the beach game, where the court would be cut down from 30 feet by 60 feet to 26’3 by 52’6.
Smaller court. Less room to cover.
Aha.
“I’m thinking ‘Boy, that really puts the onus on having a big block,’” Ratledge said. “So I got out, played the new rules, and qualified in Huntington, and we just smashed everybody in the qualifier. I was like ‘Huh? I knew I was awesome but I didn’t know I was this awesome.’ I was 23, and I was an athlete, a little bit. I knew I was efficient with passing and setting but I was an indoor player. And if you’re a good enough indoor player you can be a good beach player. I made that my mission.”
That mission has been winding. There have been valleys just as there have been peaks in what has been a decidedly untraditional career arc. In three seasons, from 2014-2016, Ratledge didn’t make a single quarterfinal, once failing to make it out of a qualifier, in Huntington Beach 2016, a year in which he played with four different partners, his highest finish being a pair of ninths.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to win an AVP,” he said. “And I was ok with that.”
Maybe that was it, then. Maybe Ratledge was going to fade quietly into the sunset, letting time do what it does best, and when the day came to hang it up as a player, he’d assume his role at his business, VolleyOC.
Besides, it’s never really been so much about the winning. Not for Ed Ratledge.
There’s always been something more.
2018 AVP San Francisco Open Sunday
Pier 30-32 San Francisco, CA
7/8/18
Credit: Robert Beck
And yet here’s the funny, totally Ed Ratledge thing, because this is a story about Ed Ratledge, and any story about Ed Ratledge must include something a bit out of the ordinary: He did win. He won against his own expectations to do so. He won despite scheduling a flight out of San Francisco on Sunday, not thinking he was going to be playing that day (he had only done so once in his AVP career, so can you blame him?).
He even had to buy a laptop at Best Buy just to do work from San Francisco that Sunday morning because, well, Ratledge had planned on running a tournament in Huntington Beach that day.
He won his first event that afternoon at 41 years young, a victory 18 years in the making. And when the final point went down, there went that Eagle, massive hands slapping everything in sight, signing everything thrown his way, talking to fans, talking to refs, talking to anybody or anything willing to listen. It’s possible he signed more autographs that afternoon in San Francisco than in his entire 18-year career up to that point. So many signatures, in fact, that he had to switch his flight on Southwest for the second time that day and still almost missed the next one.
“I was sitting in an Uber, and my plane was leaving in 40 minutes, and we were about 20 minutes out,” he said. “And my Uber driver may have broken a number of traffic laws, but we got there. Have you ever hugged an Uber driver? Because I have. And it’s awesome. I hugged that Uber driver.”
Ratledge hugged a lot of things that day. He was the last person on the plane, cozied up between a long board he bought that weekend for 25 bucks – an accomplishment he boasted about more than his actual victory – and his trophy from San Francisco. He partook in some celebratory margaritas, ordered some late night iHop, and after his wife went to bed, he finished hers, too.
“What a perfect way to end the day,” he said, laughing. “Bonus pancakes!”
Yes. The highlight of Ed Ratledge’s first AVP victory, the one that took almost 150 tries over a time period that spanned four different presidents, was the bonus pancakes around midnight.
What? Did you really think Ratledge has stuck around this sport for the winning?
Perhaps it’s an image that would do best to show what The Eagle, The Rat, Sensei – pick your preference for his nickname; he adores all three – is truly here for.
July 28. Hermosa Beach. Quarterfinals. Ratledge and Rafu Rodriguez vs. top-seeded John Hyden and Theo Brunner. For 18 years, this has been Ratledge’s Achilles Heel; not once had he beaten Hyden. Nineteen times he’d played the man. Nineteen times he’d lost.
It didn’t like much would be different at first. Hyden and Brunner blew them out, 21-14, in the first set. But they grinded, scrambled, scrapped. Ratledge was patently weird. Rodriguez was predictably brilliant.
They pushed it to three. They won in three, 15-13.
2018 Hermosa Beach Open
Hermosa Beach Pier
Hermosa Beach, CA
6/28/18
Credit: Robert Beck
And this right here, this is the image you need to see: Ed Ratledge, arms raised, smile wide as a cantaloupe, looking beatifically at a spitting image of him doing the same. Will Ratledge, arms raised, towhead hair matted in sweat, striding in the same pigeon-toed gait of his father, celebrating like dad.
Celebrating with dad.
“That photo brings tears of joy to my eyes,” he said. “That’s what my truth is. When I get the ball passed to me from my son, it’s like a lightning bolt of energy surges through me. And maybe that’s different for other people. But for me, my mission is to be the best father I can be, to be the best dad. That’s my truth.”
Ratledge had once accepted that he wasn’t going to win an AVP, because he knew that winning is ephemeral, a flash in the pan, a moment of euphoria before – before what? You have to do it again?
But to touch lives, to raise your son to be a better man than you? And have his son a better man than him?
That’s beyond permanent. That’s everlasting.
That’s joy.
That right there: That’s Ed Ratledge.
Walk onto any beach in Southern California and there is almost a 100 percent chance there will be someone playing who has been impacted by Ed Ratledge in some way or other.
“Ed has literally taught me the game of volleyball,” said Ben Vaught who, like Ratledge, is an unconventional lefty. “I was playing his VolleyOC tournaments when I was 13 years old, and the off-season of 2017 I blew up his phone to play and he gave me pointers on what I’m doing and how I can improve it. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have started playing beach volleyball, and I wouldn’t have gotten to play in the AVP tournaments.”
Vaught is now almost full-time in the main draw, first in line of the next generation of weird lefties.
Geena Urango, too, was 13 when she first met Ratledge. He was reffing. She wasn’t appreciative of his calls.
“I remember her,” Ratledge said, laughing. “She was sassy.”
And everyone remembers Ed. You don’t even need to be a player. Just stand by his court while he’s playing. He’ll talk to you. He’ll give you a high five. He’ll ask you what you think.
Hell, he’ll get mad at you if you don’t heckle him hard enough.
“We were warming up for the semifinals [in Hermosa Beach], and I hit this jump serve with, like, only finger tips, and it went under the net, and nobody said anything,” he said. “I’m like ‘C’mon! You gotta say something! How can you not heckle me for that?’”
Ed. Only Ed.
He’s caught himself, too. Felt the seductive trappings of success. The win in San Francisco predictably ushered in new expectations, to the point that after a narrow semifinal loss in Hermosa Beach, which once would have produced a career-high euphoria, he wasn’t elated for a third, but bummed for missing a final.
“Expectations are the thief of joy,” he said. And then he rummages through his phone once more and finds the pictures of him and Will, celebrating in identical fashion, one 6-foot-10, the other a bite-sized version, though the resemblances are unmistakable.
He smiles, smiles bigger, shows the pictures off.
It might have taken 18 years, but Ed Ratledge has found his truth.
2018 Hermosa Beach Open
Hermosa Beach Pier
Hermosa Beach, CA
6/28/18
Credit: Robert Beck
