The annual AVP Manhattan Beach Open graces Manhattan Beach Pier from Friday through Sunday, with the open qualifier and Walk of Fame ceremony taking place Thursday.
The main draw gets underway at 8 a.m. Friday and continues Saturday before the men’s and women’s 16-team, double-elimination tournaments conclude with their respective semifinals and finals matches.
The Walk of Fame ceremony honors winners of last year’s tournament – Taryn Brasher and Kristen Cruz on the women’s side and Chase Budinger and Miles Evans on the men’s. Olympians Sean Rosenthal and Holly McPeak will present the four champions with plaques.
Brasher and Cruz team up again this year and enter Manhattan Beach as the favorites. However, Bundinger returns with Trevor Crabb as the men’s No. 1 seed this weekend while Evans partners with Alex Ranghieri as the No. 9.
The Manhattan Beach Open serves as the second leg of the Progressive AVP Heritage Major, sandwiched between May’s Huntington Beach Open and September’s Laguna Beach Open.
Andy Benesh and Taylor Crabb were the men’s champions at Huntington Beach – and also top the men’s leaderboard in the AVP League with a 7-1 record. The duo will compete as the No. 2 seed in Manhattan Beach.
Thâmela Coradello and Victoria Lopes won the women’s title in May, but neither will compete this weekend.
El Segundo brothers Cash and Mavrick Essert came in to the open seeded as the No. 63 duo of the 101 competing on the men’s side, and are the youngest duo in the men’s field.
“We complement each other pretty well,” Mavrick said Tuesday. “He’s a big block and he can touch a lot of balls. And I’m a faster defender, so I can get those balls up to touch to give it to him to score.
“We bicker here, here and there, but I think our relationship on the court is pretty good.”
However, the siblings were swept by Colton Jeffrey and Chicory Roth in their first match of qualifiers Thursday.
Jeffrey and Roth each graduated from UC Santa Cruz. Meanwhile, Cash is a 6-foot-8 incoming freshman at Lindenwood University while Mavrick, at 6-foot-3, is a rising junior at Redondo Union High. In fact, Mavrick is the youngest male in this year’s field.
“We just want to go out there and experience these new people we play against and just see how our game compares to theirs,” Cash said. “I really want to walk away with like us playing our best and showing others that we can hang with no matter who we play.”
But the Esserts may be able to find solace in their 33rd-place finish.
The siblings’ father, Shawn Essert, competed in the AVP Manhattan Beach Open in 2005 alongside Matt Wilkens, another Southern California local. Essert and Wilkens finished 33rd – career bests for both.
It wouldn’t at all be surprising if the Esserts stay for the duration of the open anyway. If the weight the “Grandaddy of Them All” carries, or the atmosphere that surrounds every match, isn’t enough, Taylor Crabb just so happens to be Mavrick’s favorite player.