AVP Huntington Beach Open: Andy Benesh, Taylor Crabb win in debut as partners

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Andy Benesh and Taylor Crabb officially stamped themselves as the team to beat on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour.

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Benesh and Crabb won the Huntington Beach Open on Sunday afternoon, sweeping top-seeded Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, 21-18, 23-21, alongside the Huntington Beach pier.

The second-seeded pair, playing their first AVP tournament together, swept third-seeded Ahmed Tijan and Cherif Younousse of Qatar on Saturday as well, finishing 5-0 over the three-day event and dropping just one set along the way.

“It’s always our expectation to win a tournament,” said Crabb, a native Hawaiian who played indoor volleyball at Long Beach State. “It’s hard to do, and it’s hard to actually execute it, but we did. We played well all tournament. Good first AVP and just getting us ready for our partnership. We’re excited.”

Budinger and Evans represented the U.S. at the 2024 Olympics, and Tijan and Younousse are two-time Olympic partners, having won bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Games.

“I thought we had a lot of tight sets; we were just able to pull it out,” said Benesh, who played indoor volleyball at Palos Verdes High and USC. “I thought Taylor played incredible all weekend. He really helped me out when I was getting in some ruts on side outs, so it’s always great to have a great teammate like that, and he’s super competitive. So, we’re stoked with the result, obviously, but we’re more happy we were able to implement what we’ve been working on in practice.”

After blowing an early 9-4 lead in the first set against Budinger and Evans, Benesh and Crabb scored three straight points to regain some separation at 19-16, and the fifth service error of the set by Evans ended it.

“We served tough, but I thought we missed too many serves in the crucial parts of the game,” Budinger said. “Putting pressure on them, but also making them play, is what you’ve got to do, and you just can’t give them free points. I felt like, in both sets, we gave them a lot of free points in those situations.”

With the score tied 19-19 and 20-20 in the second set, Budinger and Evans each had a service error before Benesh served two straight aces to end the match.

“That’s why I never panic,” Crabb said. “I know he’s going to come through in the clutch. I believe in him and he always comes up big in the end.”

Benesh said the match-clinching ace was actually mishit.

“That was not where I was trying to hit the ball, but if you’re aggressive, sometimes the volleyball gods favor you,” he said. “It was an awesome way to end the match.”

Benesh and Crabb faced one of the bigger surprises of the tournament in the second semifinal, 12th-seeded Derek Bradford and Evan Cory. They lost their tournament opener to fifth-seeded Miles Partain and James Shaw on Friday, and were nearly eliminated in their second match that afternoon, but rallied to beat Gage Basey and Thomas Hurst and then went 3-0 in the loser’s bracket on Saturday, including a three-set win against Partain and Shaw.

“We just kept fighting,” said the 22-year-old Bradford, a 6-foot-9 Northridge resident who attended Royal High School in Simi Valley. “Stayed steady, said ‘Hey, we know our gameplan, we’re going to stick with it,’ and we just kept pushing through, kept finding rhythm, and we really developed, and we kept getting better on Saturday.”

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In the women’s competition, third-seeded Thâmela Coradello and Victoria Lopes of Brazil and ninth-seeded Devon Newberry and Savvy Simo rallied through the losers’ bracket to meet in the championship match.

Coradello and Lopes pulled out a 21-18, 21-17 sweep, but Newberry and Simo left with smiles after their first AVP tournament together and their best result as professionals.

The pair was coming off a third-place finish at an international event in Brazil, where they beat the gold medalists from the 2024 Olympics, Eduarda Lisboa and Ana Patrícia Ramos of Brazil in the round of 16, and reigning world champions Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova of Latvia in the third-place match.

“We’re still learning so much about each other,” Newberry said. “We’ve never gotten an easy route through tournaments, which makes us so happy because we get to see what it takes to make it to the top and beat the top.”

Newberry and Simo reached the championship match by upsetting top-seeded Taryn Brasher and Kristen Cruz in a thrilling three-set semifinal match earlier Sunday.

Newberry and Simo, who lost to Brasher and Cruz in three sets in a second-round match on Friday, won the first set in the rematch, 21-19, dropped the second 17-21, but then came back for a 15-13 win in the third.

“The key at the end there was continuing to swing, because Kristen is so good at digging all the shots,” Simo said. “Just confidence and going out swinging, going out aggressive, it’s always going to be good for us.”

Brasher and Cruz represented the U.S. at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, and dominated local events last year, winning the Huntington Beach Open, the Manhattan Beach Open, and the international Elite 16 in Newport Beach last October.

“That was insane,” Newberry said. “We’re really good at coming into things with no expectations. We’re just playing every game so full of joy and just so happy to be there.”

Newberry, 25, is a Santa Monica native who played indoor and beach at Marymount High School in Los Angeles and at UCLA.

Simo, 27, played at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego and UCLA.

“I’ve been admiring her for years,” Newberry said of Simo. “I obviously knew her at college, but we never played together, but I always admired her work ethic and just who she was.”

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