Life On The Summer Warm-Up Tour
By: John Krejczyk
I am sitting here on Southwest flight 1352 catching my first breath from very busy volleyball weekend. The EVP Summer Warm-Up Series just wrapped up its Broomfield, Colorado event at “Sports Oasis”. A great town, just outside of Denver, would not seem to be the ideal location for a beach volleyball event. But, that is the attraction of such a winter tour. Towns like this are hungry for beach volleyball and are willing to play it in all sorts of locations and conditions. And in the case of Denver, a lack of oxygen!
Almost like a rogue video game, players get together in old warehouses, airplane hangars and oversized garages to compete and get their chance to take it a step further and win a spot into an EVP Pro event. Inside these make shift beaches you battle abusive sand, chilly temps and low ceilings just to hear the roar of the local patrons cheering you on. Just like the “Big Dawgs” of the EVP, these locals have their own following. College teammates, parents and girlfriends are the typical posse that are there to support their own favorite player but because of the four walls that surround you it is that much more deafening. And when the victors are crowned, that is when party begins. Just like our pro stops, Corona Light proudly sponsors a post party. There everybody gets to talk about Kong blocks, huge jump serves and hits that went off the ceiling. Of course every story becomes more exaggerated with every sip of Corona Light. This is how legends begin and this is how America’s tour started.
A player with an idea to spread the gospel of beach volleyball, Ross Balling started working with Midwest bars and beach locations to showcase local beach volleyball. It was a very modest start. Such in fact, registration would be the day of the event and winning teams would be paid out from the same entry at the end of the day. But this was beach volleyball in it’s own unique form. From that point the talent and the locations would grow. The MVP was born. Over the years more locations were added and there was rising interest around the country. Sponsorships, corporations and cities jumped on board trying to become part of this puzzle. From MVP rose the current tour name EVP. The rest is history.
This is how the idea for The Summer Warm-up Tour got started. Bringing the EVP brand of volleyball back to how it began and help introduce us to players and locations that may have not had a chance to see. The road for me was a long, cold and snowy road. Osh Kosh, Seattle, Green Bay and Broomfield are just a few of the stops. Akers, Jones, Griffin and Blackburn are some of the winning players. Keep these names in mind when you are at one of the Pro Events because they have earned their spot and are ready to prove that they are not just “Snow Dawgs”.
“See you at the beach!”