May-Treanor competing again
Since she just happened to be in the neighborhood, beach volleyball legend Misty May-Treanor has elected to compete in the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals Championships Friday through Sunday near the Huntington Beach Pier.
May-Treanor 38, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, will play with fellow Long Beach State alumnus Brittany Hochevar in the AVP season-ending event, which will be marked by many partner shake ups.
May-Treanor, a longtime Costa Mesa resident who starred at Newport Harbor High, retired following the 2012 Olympics in London. But she came out of retirement to finish third with Hochevar in the AVP Seattle Open the first weekend of August.
May-Treanor, a Long Beach resident who has won 66 AVP titles and 112 pro beach events overall, declined requests to speak with media before the tournament.
April Ross, another former Newport Harbor star who resides in Costa Mesa, will be playing with Lauren Fendrick. Ross had been playing with three-time Olympic gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings, who announced Tuesday that she will undergo surgery on Thursday to repair a torn labrum in her right shoulder.
Ross, a silver medalist in London and the MVP on the AVP Tour the last two seasons, and Walsh Jennings had been playing through Walsh Jennings’ injury. They finished ninth at the Federation Internationale de Volleyball Rio Open last weekend in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But Walsh Jennings, who could not serve overhand and could not swing fully with her right arm at the net after returning from her time on the sidelines, elected to end her 2015 season to get surgery. The plan is for Walsh Jennings to return in 2016 and make a run for a fourth Olympic gold medal alongside Ross.
Walsh Jennings had been sidelined for just more than a month earlier this season, prompting Ross to pair with Costa Mesa resident Jennifer Fopma. The Costa Mesa duo won the AVP Manhattan Beach Open in mid-August, before Walsh Jennings returned and, along with Ross, finished second at the FIVB World Series of Beach Volleyball in late August in Long Beach.
Fendrick had been playing with one-time Costa Mesa resident Brooke Sweat, who is sidelined by a knee injury sustained last week.
Fopma, who had been playing with Hochevar in recent weeks, will miss the event due to a family emergency.
On the men’s side, Costa Mesa resident Brad Keenan and Newport Harbor product Ty Tramblie, who won the AVP event in Chicago two weeks ago, will be attempting to overcome an unspecified injury that prompted them to forfeit their contenders’ bracket match at the AVP Cincinnati Open last week.
Keenan, who is married to Ross, and Tramblie both declined to comment on the nature of the injury on Wednesday.
Former UC Irvine indoor player Will Montgomery will team with Michael Brunsting in a bid to earn a spot in the draw through qualifying Thursday. They are the No. 7 seed in the qualifier, which sends four teams into the main draw..
Qualifying runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, with the men’s and women’s main draw opening Friday at 9 a.m.
The tournament continues Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and concludes on Sunday with the semifinals (beginning at 9 a.m.) and the finals in the afternoon.
— Barry Faulkner