May-Treanor, Walsh return to top form
BY TIM MORRIS
Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY CHRIS KELLY staff Above, Misty May-Treanor bumps the ball toward teammate Kerri Walsh during a match Sunday morning in Belmar. At right, Walsh shows off some of the form that has made her the tour’s top player the past two years.

Volleyball’s golden girls delivered. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, the 2004 Olympic champions, who have taken beach volleyball to new heights, won the Association of Volleyball Professionals Belmar Open on Sunday. It was their sixth win in seven events on the 2005 Nissan Series Tour.

Stein Metzger and Jake Gibb, looking do to what May-Treanor and Walsh have done on the women’s tour, won their third event on the season in straight sets.

What was apparent in Belmar Sunday is that the gap between the beach volleyball darlings, May-Treanor and Walsh, and everyone else on the tour is narrowing, if ever so slightly.

For there to be a rivalry in sports, it requires more than two teams to be competitive — both must be capable of winning. Elaine Youngs and Rachel Wacholder have become May-Treanor and Walsh’s rivals, and they have been producing some terrific volleyball between them.

Above, Stein Metzger unloads a spike during a match Sunday morning in Belmar.

The week before the Belmar Open, Youngs and Wacholder snapped the 50-match win streak of May-Treanor and Walsh that included the first five events of the 2005 AVP Tour and last summer’s Olympics, with a stunning come-from-behind victory, 17-21, 22-20, 15-13. May-Treanor and Walsh had never lost a championship match (31-0) in which they had captured the first set.

At Belmar, fans witnessed the same intensity as the May-Treanor/Walsh and Youngs/Wacholder battled over three grueling sets with May-Treanor/Walsh prevailing, 24-26, 21-18, 15-13.

May-Treanor said Sunday’s match wasn’t about revenge. It was about she and Walsh getting better.

“They are playing well,” she said of Youngs and Wacholder. “We can play better. They are pushing us.

“They’ve changed their game the last couple of matches, they are running a quicker offense and changed their serves,” she added. “Their serving has picked up.”

Walsh, the AVP’s Most Valuable Player the last two years, welcomed the rivalry.

“They’re making us better,” she said. “We lost [last week] because of us. We needed to get our aggressiveness back. They are a great team. You have to be aggressive against them all the time.”

May-Treanor and Walsh took a 12-8 lead in the first set before Wacholder came up with some big plays at the net. The set reached 20-20 with both teams reaching set point before a spike by Youngs closed out the set, 26-24 for the No. 2 seeds.

Youngs and Wacholder, behind some good serving and Youngs’ presence at the net, jumped out to a 9-5 lead in the second set before May-Treanor and Walsh responded. They tied the set at 9-9 and eventually took charge, taking a 16-12 lead. They held onto the lead from there, wrapping the set up at 2 1-18.

For the second straight week, the teams would go to a third set.

Trailing 12-10, Walsh showed why she’s the MVP. Back-to-back blocks at the net tied the match at 12-12. A nicely placed serve by Walsh put she and May up 13-12. They reached match point at 14-12 on another Walsh block.

Youngs and Wacholder fought off one match point, but fell on May-Treanor’s serve, 15-13.

“I could see in their eyes they were nervous,” Walsh said. “You have to capitalize on it. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

The talk on the men’s side was parity. Metzger and Gibb are hoping to change that with their third win of the season. No other team has won more than once.

“We’ve had a great season so far,” Metzger said. “It feels good to be on top. I’ve been in this sport for a long time, getting beat up by Karch [Kiraly] and others. There are a lot of good men’s teams.”

For now, Metzger and Gibb are the best, disposing of defending Belmar champions Matt Fuerbringer and Casey Jennings in the final, 21-18, 21-14.

Metzger and Gibb were in sync from the start, with Gibb dominating at the net with his blocks and Metzger making digs and spiking winners.

In both sets, Metzger and Gibb race out to quick leads, 5-0 and 4-1.

In the first set, Fuerbringer and Jennings rallied to tie the match at 7-7 and take a 13-11 lead. Back came Metzger and Gibb to win it 21-18 on a put away by Metzger.

In the second set, Jennings and Fuerbringer never did recover from the early 4-1 deficit. Gibb, who had eight blocks, dominated at the net as he and Metzger rolled in the second set, 21-14.

Metzger and Gibb had to go through the contender’s bracket to get the win, having lost of Fuerbringer and Jennings earlier, in the tournament, 21-16, 26-24.

“They handled us good in that match,” Gibb said. “We knew we’d have to just battle back.

“We really needed this win [in the final],” he added. “We were hungry.”

Fuerbringer and Jennings were looking for their second win of the season.

Belmar was a big winner over the weekend as well. Record crowds attended the three-day event with an estimated 7,000 in attendance for the final.

The players were all in agreement that Belmar is one of their favorite stops on the tour. The AVP has been coming to the Jersey Shore town since 1991.

“The crowd is great and the venue is great,” said May-Treanor, who added that she liked the boardwalk.

Metzger remarked that Belmar is a player favorite because of its location, the beach.

“We love it here because we get to play on the beach,” he said. “A lot of the locations are on lake shores. This is a volleyball players beach. The sand is deep, you have to jump, you can’t just have a big guy stand there and block, you have to have skills.”