The teams of Gage Basey/Thomas Hurst and Marine Kinna/Chloe Loreen captured top honors Sunday in the $60,000 Association of Volleyball Professionals’ Contender Series tournament in Virginia Beach. Each of those pairs split $9,750 first-place prizes.
People going by 12th Street and Atlantic Avenue on the weekend saw powerful spikes, diving digs and precise sets on the sand from players who are looking to break through to the AVP’s top-tier events.
The last player from Hampton Roads in the event was Ayden Keeter of Yorktown, who combined with his Webber International beach volleyball college teammate Carson Barnes of Ocean View, Delaware, to go 3-0 Saturday — 2-0 in pool play before a round-of-16 victory. They split $1,200 after a 21-14, 21-18 quarterfinal defeat to eventual semifinalists Diego Perez and Jeff Samuels.
Basey, from the University of Colorado, and Hurst, from Irvine, California, were seeded fifth. Those 21-year-olds outlasted top-seeded Derek Bradford of Porter Ranch, California, and Evan Cory of Metairie, Louisiana, 18-21, 21-19, 15-12 in the final for their third victory of the day. Bradford and Cory split $5,250.
In the women’s competition, Kinna and Loreen capped a dominant day with three straight-sets victories, beating 15th-seeded Piper Ferch and Hailey Hamlett 21-18, 21-13 for the championship.
Kinna, a 25-year-old from France, played for three colleges, including Division I Loyola Marymount. Loreen, 26, from Seattle, played for Santa Clara and the Washington Huskies.
After a three-set triumph Saturday in their second round of pool play, Kinna and Loreen never came close to losing a set in the elimination bracket.
Ferch, 21, a Cal Poly player, and Hamlett, from TCU, split $5,250. They defeated a pair of higher-seeded teams to reach the title match, including a 15-21, 21-18, 15-13 semifinal thriller over No. 4 Malia Gementera and Taylor Hagenah, a Long Beach State combination.
All of the teams that lost in the round of 16 split $600, the quarterfinal losers divided $1,200, and the semifinalists pocketed $2,700. The finalists earned wild-card berths in the higher-level AVP Manhattan Beach Open in California in August.