The Huntington Beach Open has traditionally attracted a “Who’s Who?” of professional beach volleyball players.
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This weekend’s three-day event could also be entitled “Who’s playing with Who?” after a handful of top teams on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour split up during the offseason.
Health, the pursuit of better chemistry, and workload preferences typically lead to changes every new season, but the looming 2028 Los Angeles Olympics seems to have ramped up player movement.
“It’s kind of a moving year, in terms of teams teams jockeying for position, players jockeying for position,” AVP veteran James Shaw said. “This is the last year for a lot of guys to try and figure it out.”
Most of the new teams will face their first tests this weekend, including Shaw and Miles Partain, the 24-year-old Olympian who has been playing AVP events since he was 15 years old.
“It definitely makes for an exciting Huntington Beach Open,” Partain said. “So many of the top teams are newly formed partnerships.”
Partain’s departure from Andy Benesh was the biggest offseason surprise on the AVP tour.
After 3½ years together, including a berth in the 2024 Paris Olympics, Partain announced in February that he was taking a step back this year from the full-time beach volleyball grind, particularly at the international level.
He’s still working with his family to rebuild their home that burned down in the Palisades fire 16 months ago, and he has started doing sales for a modular home manufacturer he met in the process.
Partain plans to compete in the AVP League season, as well as the three Heritage events this year, beginning with the Huntington Beach Open.
Partain and Shaw have never played together competitively before, but they’ll try to make a run through the 16-team double-elimination bracket as the fifth-seeded pair.
“Miles Partain reached out to me,” Shaw said. “We have been talking for a while about the possibility, and he’s been taking things pretty slow this year and wanting to kind of ease into things. So, that’s why he and I are teaming up and testing things out.”
Partain and Shaw are set to open play on Friday at 9 a.m. against 12th-seeded Derek Bradford and Evan Cory.
If they get through that match with a win, Partain and Shaw would likely face fourth-seeded Phil Dalhausser and Trevor Crabb in a winner’s bracket quarterfinal on Friday afternoon.
“Partain and James are so new, so no one’s seen them play together,” AVP veteran Chase Budinger said. “I’m kind of excited to see what that pair looks like.”
The bracket round continues through Saturday with the semifinals and finals set for Sunday.
Shaw, like Benesh, stands 6-foot-8, but the 32-year-old Northern California native and Stanford graduate is a natural setter, more like Partain.
“Blocking is a big part of his game,” Shaw said of Benesh. “I grew up playing setter and opposite (hitter) and a little bit of outside hitter, so for me it’s more of a ball-control game.”
Benesh is also in Huntington Beach this weekend, where the former USC and Palos Verdes High star has teamed up with Taylor Crabb, a former Long Beach State indoor star who has emerged as one of the most skilled and versatile players on the AVP tour.
Their partnership immediately makes them one of the favorites to earn an Olympic spot. As host of the 2028 Games, the U.S. is guaranteed one Olympic berth per gender in beach volleyball, and the Americans have more than enough depth to qualify a second pair in each 24-team field.
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“Andy and Taylor, you’ve seen them play in some tournaments already and how well they can play at times,” Budinger said. “It’s a lot of exciting partnerships leading into 2028.”
Benesh, 31, is one of the tour’s most dominant players at the net and he has experience with Partain at the Paris Olympics.
Crabb, 34, is a five-time AVP Defensive Player of the Year who is extra hungry for an Olympic experience after missing out on the 2020 Tokyo Games because he tested positive for COVID just prior to the start of the competition.
Crabb was partnered with Jake Gibb at the time, and then primarily played with Taylor Sander from 2022-25, winning the Manhattan Beach Open together in 2023.
After Sander decided to transition back to indoor volleyball, Crabb teamed with his older brother Trevor to reach the semifinals at the Elite 16 international event in Newport Beach last October.
“Where both of us are in our careers makes this the right moment,” Crabb said of partnering with Benesh. “I’ve had time away from international tournaments, and that fire is fully back. Andy has been the top blocker in the country for the last four years. When the best player says he wants to team up, you say yes.”
Benesh and Crabb are seeded second this weekend behind Budinger and Miles Evans, the other 2024 U.S. Olympic duo that is playing out the AVP schedule this season before planning to go their separate ways when Olympic qualifying begins at the end of this year.
Budinger, who will turn 38 later this month, plans to make another Olympic run with Trevor Crabb, while Evans has not announced his plans beyond this year.
“My body feels good, it feels young, it still feels athletic enough,” Budinger said of another Olympic try. “As long as the body feels good and the mind’s right, definitely going to go for it.”
On the women’s side, two-time Olympian and former USC and El Dorado High star Kelly Cheng has teamed up with fellow USC grad Megan Kraft.
Cheng played with Molly Shaw last season after her 2024 Olympic partner, Sara Hughes, underwent Achilles surgery. Cheng approached Hughes about re-connecting, but Hughes (USCC, Mater Dei High) had moved on with new partner Ally Batenhorst.
Kraft had been paired with Terese Cannon the past two seasons and they seemed to establish themselves as potential 2028 Olympic hopefuls after reaching the finals of the Huntington Beach and Manhattan Beach Opens last summer, but Kraft decided to leave her options open this offseason.
Cannon, meanwhile, underwent shoulder surgery earlier this year and will be sidelined for the first part of the season.
Cheng had her eye on the 23-year-old Kraft “for a little while now” and set up a meeting at a coffee shop to discuss a possible partnership.
“We just talked about goals, what we wanted out of the sport, values, and everything just went perfectly,” Kraft said. “We’ve been rocking and rolling since.”
Cheng and Kraft, seeded second behind Taryn Brasher and Kristen Cruz, will open play on Friday at 10 a.m. against an opponent that will come through the qualifying rounds.
AVP HUNTINGTON BEACH OPEN
When: Friday-Sunday, plays begins at 9 a.m. (8:30 a.m. start on Sunday)
Where: Huntington Beach Pier
What: There are 16-team main draw brackets for the men and women in a double-elimination format. Sets will be played to 21 points, best two of three.
Who: The top-seeded team on the men’s side is Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, with Andy Benesh and Taylor Crabb seeded No. 2. The top-seeded duo on the women’s side is Taryn Brasher and Kristen Cruz, with former USC standouts Kelly Cheng and Megan Kraft seeded No. 2.
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