Tri Bourne is back on the beach – Americans dominate AVP Hawaii
Last December, Tri Bourne talked to us about the auto-immune disesase he is fighting. End of this year’s AVP season, Tri came back for the AVP events in Manhattan and Chicago. And now he had a great appearance in the season’s last event at the AVP Invitational in Hawaii. After two years of absence and only a few training sessions, he and his childhood friend Trevor Crabb returned in style.
The two Hawaiian natives made it into the semifinals of an event that featured four American and four international top teams in a two-day double-elimination format. The hometown boys managed to post two wins beating Phil Dalhausser/ Nick Lucena and Saymon/Guto (Brazil). They were only stopped in the semifinals where they lost the rematch against Phil and Nick who finally won the tournament. Especially split blocking proved to be an approach that can go far for Tri and Trevor in the future.
Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena had been struggling on Saturday but came back strong on Sunday for the finals. “Sunday Phil” with great blocking and aggressive serving (7 aces in the final) secured their fourth AVP title of the season. In the final they beat Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen in two sets (21:16, 27:25). The Dutch top team had eliminated Norwegian Vikings Anders Mol and Christian Sorum earlier in the tournament. In the second set, the Dutch used the freeze to come back from a 14:20 to have set point at 21:20 and 25:24. But finally they lost 25:27 after 47 additional serves and 24 minutes in the freeze.
On the women’s side, it was again “A-team” April Ross and Alix Klineman who won their fourth AVP title together. In a rematch of the Chicago final, they defeated Summer Ross and Sara Hughes (18:21, 21:19, 15:10) who had eliminated Brazilian top-seeds Agatha/Duda in the seminfinals.
