AVP, the biggest and longest-running professional volleyball league, hosted beach volleyball matches for the first time in an NBA arena this past weekend.
Hosted at the Intuit Dome, crews were tasked with bringing 300 tons of sand from a quarry in Palm Springs, which is roughly 16 truck loads. AVP is looking for creative ways to attract a new audiences to the sport, often hosting their marquee volleyball events in unconventional locations.
Timelapse of Intuit Dome transforming into an indoor beach vollyball court. (Kelvin Kuo / Los Angeles Times)
A wooden sandbox was constructed to contain the prewashed sand and form a single court.
It took the crew, which consists of about 150 people for a change over a typical event at Intuit Dome, five hours after the conclusion of the event to ready the arena for Clippers season ticket-holders the following day.
The former “King of the Beach” kept his crown tucked away Saturday night.
Clad in denim jeans and a plain white shirt, Sinjin Smith hovered on the sidelines of the sand.
When Hagen Smith — the son and spitting image of Sinjin — sailed a serve too far, Sinjin craned his neck back and clenched his jaws.
“On the court, he tells me to serve short, and I never listen,” Hagen said.
Perhaps the match of the tournament as Logan Webber and Hagen Smith of the LA Launch escape a nail-biting three-setter, in which two sets went into extra points, to maintain their perfect record and put down the Palm Beach Passion featuring legend Phil Dalhausser.@latimessportspic.twitter.com/F9AmPH0AAK
And when Hagen — a UCLA alum like his father — uncorked a spike that thudded into the sand untouched, Sinjin’s arm sliced the air as a grin stretched across his face and his applause echoed.
“I wasn’t disguising anything,” Sinjin said.
Anonymity didn’t stand a chance as Sinjin watched Hagen and Logan Webber locked in a razor-edged three-setter against the Palm Beach Passion that twice spilled past regulation.
But as Sinjin rode every rally, Hagen and Webber eked out a narrow victory, going 13-15, 18-16 and 18-16. The L.A. men’s duo remains undefeated through five weeks of AVP play, helping offset the L.A. Launch female duo’s first loss of the year earlier Saturday. Their combined records will determine whether they win the AVP League regular season crown.
L.A. Launch’s Hagen Smith spikes the ball as Logan Webber watches during their win over Palm Beach Passion’s Phil Dalhausser and Trevor Crabb at the Intuit Dome on Saturday.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Two dozen years removed from his final outing on the sand, Sinjin carved his career on the chaos of close calls. But Friday, with his son trading kills in a battle that felt like it refused to end, Sinjin was dodging heart attacks.
As the crowd learned in, Sinjin leaned back.
“It’s nerve wracking to watch him — you couldn’t get a better match for the fans, but I hated it,” Sinjin said. “I want to win in two and go home.”
While Sinjin might’ve winced through every extra-point rally, Hagen soaked it all in — steady under pressure.. He may be “trying his best to live up to” his father, but to hear Sinjin tell it, Hagen had already surpassed the myth.
Sinjin Smith competes in the AVP Santa Barbara Open on 18 Aug. 18, 2001, in Santa Barbara.
(Icon Sportswire / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“He’s an unbelievable resource to me. I’ll ask him at like, midnight, ‘Hey, can you come out in the morning and coach me?’ He’s there,” Hagen said of Sinjin. “I’ve modeled my game after him, through and through. If I can be as anything like him as a player, I’m honored.”
Sinjin marveled at Hagen with the awe of a fan.
“He’s his own person. He’s playing for himself, trust me,” Sinjin said. “He may be wanting to prove something to me, I don’t know, but he’s done so much more than I ever expected. He’s so fun to watch — the fact that he’s my son, that’s just icing on the cake.”
Sinjin, the UCLA and International Volleyball Hall of Famer, tapped his temple twice when asked where he and his son aligned on the sand. The resemblance, he said, lives in the mind — because Hagen’s style has taken on its own shape, forged far from his father’s shadow.
“He jumps and he’s powerful and he moves in the sand,” Sinjin said. “I did everything pretty well, which was my strength, but he really excels in — for one, attacking the ball, he hits the ball harder and more explosively when he attacks than I ever was.”
For as long as Hagen could remember, Pauley Pavilion was the lighthouse in the distance — the promised land of his childhood dreams. And when he finally walked into the arena, his eyes fixed to a familiar face.
There was Sinjin, featured on the walls around the Bruins’ home.
“Getting to see that, it’s like, ‘Ah, this is home to me. I’ve got dad helping me out, I’ve got dad watching over me. Luckily I got to wear his number that was retired and that felt awesome,” said Hagen, who wore his father’s No. 22 jersey in college.
Sinjin played under Al Scates — the architect of UCLA’s volleyball dynasty and the winningest coach in NCAA men’s volleyball history. Under Scates and his 19 national titles, winning was the annual expectation.
And under Scates’ tutelage, Sinjin bookended his career with national glory, and flooded his cabinets with individual accolades — two All-American recognitions, a Most Outstanding Player distinction at the 1979 national championship and a stalwart of the historic undefeated 1979 squad.
L.A. Launch’s Hagen Smith, left, and Logan Webber, right, celebrate with L.A. Launch teammate Terese Cannon after Smith and Webber beat Palm Beach Passion’s Phil Dalhausser and Trevor Crabb during AVP League play at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood Saturday.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“[Scates] was the best coach of all time in the United States,” Sinjin said. “Al had a knack for picking players that had more than just a physical game. They had a mental game as well. … There’s so many of them that Al trained and went on to be the best of the very best in either beach or indoors.”
Decades later, Hagen was coached by Scates’ protege John Speraw.
After rattling off the names of former teammates and sand-side partners, Sinjin paused, seemingly struck by a pattern he couldn’t ignore: “God,” he said, “there’s a lot of UCLA legends going around.”
Two of those share the same last name.
“[Sinjin] tried to get me into tennis,” Hagen said, “and I was like, ‘Dad, I just want to play volleyball. I just want to be like you.’”
Other AVP results
In other AVP action Saturday, Palm Beach Passion’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson handed L.A. Launch’s Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft their first loss, winning 12-15, 15-6, 15-10.
San Diego Smash’s Devon Newberry and Geena Urango defeated Miami Mayhem’s Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw 15-10, 15-11.
And San Diego Smash’s Chase Budinger and Miles Evans beat Miami Mayhem’s Chaim Schalk and James Shaw 11-15, 15-11, 15-13.
Devon Newberry is closing in on two years as a professional beach volleyball player. Yet for the last 731 days, “professional” has always felt like an elusive label.
The former UCLA standout is accustomed to life as a beach volleyball player — hauling her equipment on the beach, tugging her bag across the uneven sand while weaving through sunbathers and surfboards. She’s used to hearing provisional bleachers creak under sunscreen-slathered fans as music buzzes through nearby portable speakers.
There’s charm in that chaos. But it’s nothing like the entrance Newberry made Friday at the Intuit Dome.
Above her, the sweeping halo scoreboard glowed, flashing beneath the thump of blasting pop anthems. Around her, where NBA chants once echoed, beach volleyball fans cheered. And strangest of all, tons of sand created a faux indoor shoreline.
After two years chasing it, Newberry found her label.
“I walked into the Intuit Dome today and I was like, ‘I feel like a professional athlete walking in,’” Newberry said. “I haven’t felt like that as a beach player. There’s very rare moments when you’re like, ‘Wow, I am really a professional athlete.’ And when I was going underground here and looking all around me, I was like, ‘I really am a professional athlete.’ And that’s because we’re playing at the Intuit Dome.”
In what began as a head-scratcher for the players themselves, 300 tons of sand were poured into the Intuit Dome, turning the Clippers’ arena into a pop-up beach — where the L.A. Launch kept their perfect run afloat for the start of AVP League Week 5.
The Launch struck first and last — with Megan Kraft and Terese Cannon opening with a win, and Hagen Smith and Logan Webber closing it out — both pairs dismantling the San Diego Smash. Sandwiched between those victories, Palm Beach Passion’s men’s and women’s teams both made quick work of the Miami Mayhem.
The moment Newberry described — descending into an NBA arena re-imagined as a sand-strewn battleground — was the AVP’s moonshot: to re-imagine the sport in lights, not solely sunlight.
“Playing in such an amazing place, brand new building, with everything going on, with the new building around here, it’s really cool,” said 2016 Olympian Chaim Schalk. “To get to play at such an iconic arena is an honor.”
Logan Webber of the L.A. Launch spikes over Chase Budinger of the San Diego Smash at the Intuit Dome on Friday night.
(Joe Scarnici / Getty Images)
Beach volleyball rarely has ventured beyond its coastal roots. But at the Intuit Dome, the sport embraced a new direction.
“This shows that beach volleyball is growing and it’s trying to adapt to the world we live in, finding a new way for fans to interact with the players, and new ways for the sport to be exciting,” said Chase Budinger, a former NBA player who became a beach volleyball player. “This will get more people in the stands because it’s so new and so different.”
In place of sun-worshiping fans camped out on makeshift bleachers, parents lounged on cushioned seats as kids nestled beside them balancing chicken wings and pizzas on their laps.
The sport welcomed a combination of newcomers hunting for Friday night entertainment and AVP devotees.
“There’s so many people who love beach volleyball, and so many people who would love beach volleyball if they were just given the opportunity to go watch,” Newberry said. “And not everybody can make it out.”
Change comes with tradeoffs. With no wind, the court became something of a power chamber — the compact sand lending itself to higher and cleaner jumps, the still air enabling blistering serves and monstrous spikes that might have drifted wide on the beach.
Rallies became quicker and tighter. The margin for error shrank, tightening the grip on the crowd.
“For a lot of people watching beach volleyball for the first time, it’s really hard to conceptualize how wind, how deep the sand is, might affect play,” Newberry said. “So it feels like more of an even playing field which allows everybody to watch really entertaining volleyball.”
By re-imagining the boundaries of where its sport can potentially thrive, the AVP might have sketched out a novel blueprint for other sports.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if other sports follow and start expanding their ideas of where they could play,” said Olympic silver medalist Brandie Wilkerson. “I’m excited to see where this is going to go and see other sports try to catch up.”
AVP, the biggest and longest-running professional volleyball league, will play matches in an NBA arena for the first time this weekend in Inglewood.
A crew picked up 16 dump truck loads from a quarry in Palm Springs, delivering 300 tons of sand into the Intuit Dome for AVP League matches on Friday and Saturday.
The crew constructed a wooden sandbox barrier to protect the arena floor. The sand, pre-washed and compacted upon arrival, was dumped into an 18-inch wooden frame, with elements such as hospitality added to help remove debris from the air.
A worker prepares sand at the Intuit Dome ahead of an AVP tournament.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“If all goes well, it’s about a six- to eight-hour build from start to finish with the court,” said Logan Dan, head of operations for AVP Professional Beach Volleyball Tours. “It takes about six hours to build the court specifically.”
Once the event concludes, the crew dismantles the frame and removes the sand using equipment that looks like a modified small tractor.
“We break the box open and use a skid steer with a box broom attachment — it sweeps up a lot of the sand,” Dan said.
Although indoor beach volleyball is unusual, the AVP’s new league model — introduced last year — has made it possible to bring tournaments to unconventional venues. The league is investing in creative ways to grow accessibility and exposure.
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1.One of many trucks makes its way through the Intuit Dome to deliver sand in preparation of an AVP league event.2.Workers slowly cover the floor of the Intuit Dome with sand.(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“What that has allowed us to do is to bring volleyball into different areas that it might not be,” Dan said. “For instance, we’re going to New York next week, and we’ll be putting a court in Central Park, right in Wollman Rink, where they normally have ice skating in the winter and pickleball in the summer.”
Conditions for beach volleyball differ significantly between outdoor and indoor play. Sun, wind and heat heavily influence outdodor players’ performance and court dynamics. Indoors, the environment remains cooler and still, free from elements such as whipping winds or scorching sun.
“It’s so close and loud and intimate that it creates that very cool environment,” Logan said.
AVP declined to disclose what it costs to build courts in unconventional locations such as the Intuit Dome.
Logan said AVP staff hope fans will enjoy a fun, family-oriented community environment that features more seats close to the action than a typical beach volleyball court.
Workers cover the floor of the Intuit Dome with sand ahead of an AVP league event.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The schedule
AVP League matches start Friday at 5 p.m. with the L.A. Launch playing the San Diego Smash in the first match.
Doors open Saturday at 4 p.m., with the Palm Beach Passion playing the L.A. Launch during the first match.
Tickets started at $43.50 apiece.
What’s at stake
The AVP League format differs from traditional tournaments. A men’s duo and women’s duo represent a city and their combined records determine position in league standings. At the end of league play, one of eight cities will be crowned the AVP League champion. The playoffs feature a postseason tournament seeded based on each duo’s record during the season. The tournament splits into male and female competition groups, with the winning duo in each group earning the top prize.
The top two teams in the league standings are the L.A. Launch and the Palm Beach Passion. L.A. Launch is undefeated, while Palm Beach Passion is 6–2.
Who is playing in Inglewood?
Four of the league’s eight city teams will be represented. The lineup includes numerous Olympians, USC alums and a former NBA player.
No. 1 L.A. Launch Men: Hagen Smith and Logan Webber | Women: Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft
No. 2 Palm Beach Men: Trevor Crabb and Phil Dalhausser | Women: Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson
No. 6 San Diego Smash Men: Chase Budinger and Miles Evans | Women: Abby Van Winkle and Geena Urango
No. 8 Miami Mayhem Men: Chaim Schalk and James Shaw | Women: Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw
