Presho Heats Up After Warm Welcome From His Friends

Mark Presho responded to a warm welcome from his hometown crowd and had 13 kills to lead Team Paul Mitchell to a 15-6 victory over Team OP in the men’s final of a Bud Light Pro Beach Volleyball League tournament here Sunday.

Presho had a lot of help from two-time Olympic gold medalist Craig Buck, who had 11 kills and five blocks. But Presho, who played for Edison High and the University of Hawaii, clearly was the crowd favorite.

“It was awesome. I didn’t know what to expect,” said Presho, who lives in San Diego. “A bunch of [friends] showed up. You have to love it.”

OP setter Dan Greenbaum, a 1992 Olympic bronze medalist, saw early that Presho was hitting well and set him again and again. Paul Mitchell jumped to a 10-2 lead and never looked back.

“Presho played an incredible game hitting for them. He was unstoppable,” said OP captain Dusty Dvorak, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist and former Laguna Beach High standout. “That’s what wins tournaments. You get a hot player and you just go to him. Dan Greenbaum did a good job of that, but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that out.”

OP, which won the last two tournaments, secured a spot in the final after finishing 3-0 in pool play and in first place by a large margin in point differential. It defeated Doug Partie’s Team Sony, 12-11, in a meaningless playoff game before the final.

“Every week we see teams cruise through [pool play] and have trouble in the final. I don’t know why that is,” Dvorak said. “There is true parity in this league.”

Dvorak had to shuffle his OP roster at the last minute after former Edison player Mike Diehl announced Thursday he was leaving the tour to attempt to qualify for the Miller Lite AVP tour. Dvorak called another former Edison player, Leland Quinn, who also played for UC Irvine. Quinn fit in quickly with 14 kills in his first pool-play game Saturday to lead OP to an 11-10 victory over Sony.

“I really didn’t have any time to get worried,” said Quinn, who canceled his plans to play in a tournament this weekend in Albuquerque after getting the call from Dvorak Thursday.

In the final, Quinn led OP with 11 kills, but saw many more spikes thwarted by the 6-foot-9 Buck.

“To be blocked by him is an honor,” Quinn said.

Buck, 37, remains an awe-inspiring blocker despite a nagging knee injury.

“[Buck] will fire up for the big game,” Paul Mitchell captain Jeff Williams said. “For the [rest of] the tournament, his knee is a little sore . . . [and] we pretty much have to carry him. But when it comes to the big game, we give him a lot of attention.”

Earlier in pool play, OP defeated Paul Mitchell, 15-2, in what Paul Mitchell players called their “mid-season crisis.”

“We started yelling at each other and we kind of fell apart as a team,” Presho said.

That was the only blemish on Paul Mitchell’s pool-play record. It finished second with a 2-1 record, advancing to the semifinal against Dan Hanan’s Team Outdoor Products, which finished 1-2 and third in pool play.

Paul Mitchell found itself trailing in the semifinal, 9-4, but this time the players didn’t turn on each other. Instead, they fought back to defeat Outdoor Products, 13-10, to advance to the final.

“This is a team sport. You have to stay together as a team,” said Presho, who will serve as Coach Marv Dunphy’s assistant at Pepperdine in the spring.