It would seem kind of an odd choice for the Dollar Shave Club. Of all the well-groomed men on the AVP Tour, the grooming company opted to sponsor the most famously hirsute fellows in beach volleyball: Maddison and Riley McKibbin.
I suppose it makes sense in a way. Riley’s beard is at least under control and well-maintained, and he clearly uses something to keep it that way. I don’t know about Maddison. His beard is in several zip codes at once, so much so that in an Instagram post he recently filmed himself drinking water, with much of the water zig-zagging through his beard.
A Bearda Filter, you could say.
But the Dollar Shave Club took a liking to the McKibbins, because basically everybody takes a liking to the McKibbins and their wildly popular YouTube channel, which blends humor and entertainment but also legitimate and practical volleyball lessons into bite-sized increments. When we practiced together last Monday, a guy from northern California ran over to introduce himself during a break, telling them how much he enjoyed the videos. I can’t imagine he’s the only one to do so, seeing as the McKibbins get five digits of downloads per video and recently eclipsed the 10,000-subscriber milestone.
What the Dollar Shave Club offered was this: $2,000 for an advertising spot in their next video.
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Most of our eyes would have lit up with those little dollar signs like they do in cartoons and taken that money and either reinvested it in equipment, put it in the bank account to finally pay ourselves for an entrepreneurial venture that was finally making money, or went straight to Brother’s Burritos (they probably went to Brother’s anyway).
What the McKibbins did was this: Take that 2 grand and throw it on themselves. Sort of.
They organized a four-on-four match on Saturday, April 21st, hauling in Casey Patterson and Stafford Slick, Sean Rosenthal and Chase Budinger, and NBA star Richard Jefferson and Lakers coach Luke Walton.
Given that star-studded cast, you’d think this has been long in the making, a preordained ordeal planned around Walton’s NBA schedule and the practices of the other AVP players. Nah. That’s not really how the McKibbins – or anybody in beach volleyball, for that matter – roll.
They were in traffic on Wednesday and the idea just sort of arose, in the way that ideas do when we’re bored but our minds are whirring. They called Patterson. He was in. So was Slick. So was Rosie and Budinger and, hey, he knew a couple NBA guys who might like to play too.
Just like that, an NBA coach, a two-time Olympian and another one-time Olympian, an NBA champion, the most exciting rookie the AVP has seen in quite some time, and the Beard Bros had themselves a $2,000 match.
And it’s free. Just roll out to 21st Street in Hermosa Beach at 9 a.m. on Saturday. The teams have yet to be figured out, as does any type of shaving bet (they already made Patterson and Slick shave their beards after beating them in a third set at practice) though it doesn’t really matter.
It’s a Saturday morning match with six AVP stars, an NBA champ and the coach of the local NBA team.
You really gonna miss that?
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