Volleyball: Beach tournament returns to Seaside

Gary Henley, The Daily Astorian, Ore.
·2 min read

Aug. 15—Seaside can put the "annual" back into the Seaside Beach Volleyball tournament, as the popular event made its return to the beach last weekend, after cancellation of the 2020 tournament.

Officially, it was beach tournament No. 39 for Seaside. Yet the 2021 event marked the 40th anniversary of one of the largest beach volleyball gatherings on the west coast.

This year, the 185 courts set up on the beach in front of the Turnaround area featured nearly 1,600 hundred teams and thousands of players, mostly from Washington, Oregon and California, with entrants from states including Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Montana, Texas and New York, among others.

The action officially began last Thursday with the Juniors divisions, and wrapped up Sunday with play in the four's and six's divisions.

In between, Saturday closed with exciting championships on Court 1 in the men's and women's open/professional divisions.

The men's open winners were Evan Cory, a 6-foot-3 left-hander from Metairie, Louisiana, and 6-7 teammate Logan Webber (Grand Rapids, Michigan), as the duo topped the team of Travis Mewhirter and Adam Roberts in the final.

Cory and Webber were coming off a recent championship in the AVPNext New Orleans tournament in Kenner, Louisiana.

Meanwhile, the women's open title match went all three sets, with the California team of Megan Nash and Brittany Tiegs (Redondo Beach) rallying for a 17-21, 21-16, 15-12 victory over Emily Hartong and Macy Jerger.

In other division championships, No. 1 seed Danielle Jacobson and Callie Weber took the first set, 21-19, and won another close battle in the second set to secure the victory over the team of Allison and Brenna Meehan in the women's AA championship match.

Jacobson/Weber, from the Seattle area, led 14-12 in the second set, before the Meehan's rallied to tie it at 14-14.

The match saw ties at 15, 16, 17 and 18, before Jacobson/Weber caught a wave of momentum and scored the final three points for a 21-18 win.

Weber will be a senior with the University of Washington beach volleyball team in 2022. Jacobson played collegiately at Central Washington.

In the men's AA North division, the team of David Aspidov and Vitaly Aspidov swept Team Enriques, 21-17, 21-19.

In the South division, No. 1 seed Colin Kim and Marshall Rooney lost the first set of the finals, but rallied to win in three sets over No. 10 seed Mark Bejan and Vitaly Martinov, 15-21, 21-15, 15-10.