Including Futures, there have been 11 tournaments thus far on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour calendar.
With Toni Rodriguez and Kylie DeBerg’s victory in last night’s semifinal at the Xiamen Challenge, an American women’s team has now made the finals in seven of them – and that includes Futures in Valencia, Spain, and Cervia, Italy, in which a total of one American team played.
Even more encouraging for USA Volleyball is that it didn’t even matter who won the semifinal; there would be some red, white, and blue competing for gold either way. In what has become a comically recurring motif early in this 2025 season, Rodriguez and DeBerg matched up with Abby Van Winkle and Savvy Simo, a team they had already played twice this season and once in Xiamen. DeBerg even matched up with Simo and Van Winkle at the AVP Huntington Beach Heritage event a week ago, winning in three with her domestic partner, Hailey Harward. In the rubber match, it was DeBerg and Rodriguez who prevailed, winning 21-18, 18-21, 15-12 to put themselves in the final and, more important in the grand scheme of the season, give themselves a big finish that was much needed.
They entered the season as one of the more intriguing question marks, a pair of blockers – and good ones – who would, it was presumed, rely on effective side out, serving, and a handful of blocks to carry them through tournaments. In the opening event of the year, the combination appeared to work, with a fifth-place finish at the Yucatan Challenge and notable wins over Simo and Van Winkle, France’s Lezana Placette and Alexia Richard, Julia Donlin and Lexy Denaburg, and a hard-fought loss to Italy’s Valentina Gottardi and Claudia Scampoli, who would go on to win gold.
And then they lost six straight matches over the next three tournaments, taking back-to-back-to-back 19th-place finishes.
With entry points plummeting, they needed to go to China and come back with a fifth or better.
They’ve done just that.
The route there was far from easy.
A second-round pool play loss to Simo and Van Winkle put them in the first round of the playoff bracket, where they swept Japan’s Miki Ishii and Saki Maruyama. That pitted them against Placette and Richard, 2024 Olympians, who again fell with surprisingly little resistance, 21-13, 21-16. Their biggest test awaited in the quarterfinals, against Donlin and Denaburg, who appeared to be finding their chemistry with a qualifier win in Huntington Beach to cement themselves in the AVP League.
For the second time this season, it was Rodriguez and DeBerg who came out victorious, winning 21-18, 17-21, 15-12.
Now, after that semifinal victory over Simo and Van Winkle, Rodriguez and DeBerg will meet Finland’s Niina Ahtiainen and Taru Lahti for gold in Xiamen. It marks DeBerg’s second final appearance and Rodriguez’s fourth. Simo and Van Winkle will play Germany’s Lea Kunst and Melanie Paul for bronze. Simo will be vying for her first Beach Pro Tour medal since a silver with Rodriguez in La Paz of 2023, while Van Winkle will play for the first podium of her career.
USA Men Miss Podium Again
Successful as this season has been for the American women, it has been equally as uneventful for the American men. Both USA men’s teams bowed out of the playoffs on Saturday in China. Tri Bourne and Evan Cory, after winning pool, fell to Israel, and Chase Budinger and Miles Evans were swept by Adrian Mol and Markus Mol. Hagen Smith and Logan Webber were summarily dismissed in the first round of playoffs, swept by young Austrians Timo Hammarberg and Tim Berger, 21-18, 21-8.