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Usual faces shine at AVP tour stop in South Lake |
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Written by Jeremy Evans/World news service
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Monday, 18 September 2006 |
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 STATELINE — After three days of inclement weather, the AVP Lake Tahoe Best of the Beach volleyball tournament eventually looked like, well, a beach volleyball tournament.
The snow, rain, clouds, wind and low temperatures that plagued the tournament Thursday through Saturday disappeared on Sunday, with temperatures hovering in the 70s and players wearing bathing suits that displayed their hard-earned tans. But while it may have taken four days for optimal playing conditions to emerge, the weather did nothing to derail the hottest men’s and women’s teams on tour this season.
In the men’s final, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser defeated Dax Holdren and Sean Scott 20-22, 21-19, 15-9 in front of almost 2,000 spectators at MontBleu’s outdoor sports pavilion. Then in the women’s final, Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor recorded their seventh consecutive AVP title with a 21-14, 21-15 victory over Jennifer Boss and Rachel Wacholder.
 “It’s never anti-climactic,” said Walsh, who also won a gold medal with May-Treanor at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. “We’re playing at a different site, at a different altitude, and we enjoy every single win. It never gets old. It’s also nice to have the inaugural win here at MontBleu.”
For Rogers and Dalhausser, it was their eighth domestic victory of the season and the most on the AVP tour since 1997, when Jose Loiola and Kent Steffes won 12 events. One of their wins that year was in Lake Tahoe, the last time the AVP came to the area.
Although it’s taken nine years for the AVP to return to Lake Tahoe, the players wouldn’t mind seeing it as an annual stop — assuming the weather cooperates.
 “It’s been kind of a wacky tournament,” Scott said. “We had some snow on Friday, and that was the first time I’ve played in snow. Saturday was still a little chilly and it was pretty nice today, so we’ve had kind of everything. I think Tahoe could be a great stop. It’s beautiful up here and I think the players like it.”
Check out the photo gallery from the finals of the AVP Lake Tahoe Best of the Beach tournament here.
 Photos this page by Keith Sheffield/Tahoe World
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Last Updated ( Monday, 18 September 2006 )
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