Shake-Ups in AVP Women's Partnerships for Chicago

Shake-Ups in AVP Women's Partnerships for Chicago

When one of the AVP tour’s top players decides to sit out an event and his or her partner is forced to pick up someone else, the ripple effects are felt throughout the main draw.

Aug 31, 2016 by Megan Kaplon
Shake-Ups in AVP Women's Partnerships for Chicago
When one of the AVP tour’s top players decides to sit out an event and his or her partner is forced to pick up someone else, the ripple effects are felt throughout the main draw.

We suspect that exactly what happened when Kerri Walsh Jennings chose not to travel to Chicago for the final AVP tournament of the year, and April Ross asked Kelly Reeves to play instead.

Reeves’ former partner Ali McColloch will play with Geena Urango. Urango’s usual teammate Angela Bensend is not signed up for Chicago.

Other new partnerships on the women’s side include Emily Day and Irene Hester Pollock, Jennifer Fopma and Emily Stockman, and Brittany Hochevar and Kristin Hildebrand. Day and Pollock played together in the ASICS World Series of Beach Volleyball, aka the FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam, last week, coming in through the qualifier and taking a 17th.

Fopma played the last two AVPs with Jen Kessy, but with Kessy sitting this one out, she picked up Stockman (who previously partnered with Sheila Shaw and Amanda Dowdy). Dowdy will play her second tournament alongside Whitney Pavlik, after the duo took seventh in Manhattan Beach.

Hochevar played one AVP and an FIVB event with Emily Day, but evidently the partnership didn’t click (despite the duo winning a Manhattan Beach Open title), as Day is now with Pollock and Hochevar has picked up Hildebrand, a 6-foot USA Women’s National Team player who has competed in three previous AVP events. Hildebrand’s highest finish to date is a ninth with Lauren Fendrick at the 2015 Cincinnati Open.