Pro Beach Volleyball MakesStop in Venice

Two-man professional beach volleyball will make its first stop of the season in Southern California when the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals Tour comes to Venice Beach this weekend.

The $75,000 Venice Beach Open, a double-elimination tournament, begins Saturday at 9 a.m, with the finals scheduled for Sunday at 3 p.m.

The top-seeded team for the event will be Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, who together made up the winningest team the past decade.

Smith enters the tournament with 108 career victories and has won more than $500,000 in his career. Stoklos has 88 victories. They have won five tournaments this year.

But in recent years, Smith and Stoklos have struggled to keep their stranglehold on the tour.

Mike Dodd of Manhattan Beach and long-time partner Tim Hovland of Playa del Rey earned the most prize money in a single season last year when they won eight events and $164,000.

However, Dodd and Hovland started slowly this season and are currently the third-ranked team on the circuit. The pair didn’t get their first victory until April 15, when they defeated Smith and Stoklos to capture a $60,000 tournament in Houston.

But Dodd and Hovland are coming into Venice with a victory over Smith and Stoklos in Fresno May 20.

Two-time Olympian Karch Kiraly, considered one of the world’s finest players, is teamed with Kent Steffes. Kiraly and Steffes are currently the second-ranked team on the beach, having already won a pair of events.

Hermosa Beach’s Brent Frohoff and Scott Ayakatubby got hot at the end of April, beating Hovland and Dodd in Ft. Worth. A week later they finished second to Smith and Stoklos in the Cuervo Gold Crown in Clearwater, Fla.

But Ayakatubby has since been sidelined because of a chronic back injury. Frohoff will team with Costa Mesa’s Dan Vrebalovich in Venice.

As in traditional six-man indoor volleyball, the pro beach game consists of 15-point games which must be won by two points or more.

In a case where two teams with a loss each meet for the championship, a seven-point sudden-death game is played for the title.

The Venice event, which will be aired on Prime Ticket May 28 and 30, is held north of the Venice Pier at Washington Blvd. and Pacific Ave.