Big Win for Metzger, Gibb

For Stein Metzger and Jake Gibb, winning the Manhattan Beach Open wasn’t about ending the top-seeded team jinx, proving something in a made-up East Coast-West Coast beach volleyball rivalry or strengthening their grip on the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals season points race lead.

All of those things were secondary Sunday when they defeated Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, 21-19, 21-10, in the crown jewel of beach volleyball, where making history is the primary spoils for the victors.

The tournament carries more meaning than any other in the sport because of a storied history, a list of winners that includes all the sport’s legends and a tradition of immortalizing the winners each year with bronze plaques on the Manhattan Beach Pier.

“Real quickly you learn how special this tournament is,” said Gibb, who, with only five years of pro beach volleyball experience, is a relative newcomer to the sport. “Other tournaments I go in I think about the volleyball. I come into this one thinking ‘This is Manhattan.’ ”

It took only a simple cellphone picture message from Coach Jeff Alzina to remind Metzger, who won the tournament with Kevin Wong in 2001. Metzger was at his Manhattan Beach home Saturday night when he heard his phone beeping. Alzina had sent a photo of the plaque from Metzger’s 2001 victory.

“I called him right away and we got all fired up,” Metzger said. “Being on the pier with all those great names up there -- just to be in the same sentence or same paragraph as them is special, but to be on the same pier forever is pretty great.”

They could have begun engraving the plaques pretty early this year. Metzger and Gibb, the AVP’s top team this season, were nearly flawless as they took down the Floridians who had defeated Metzger and Gibb four times in six previous meetings this season.

In the process, they became the first top-seeded team to win an open tournament since the 2003 season opener and won for an AVP-best fourth time this season to extend their lead in the season points race to 90 points over Dax Holdren and Jeff Nygaard with two tournaments to play.

They became the first team without a California native to win at Manhattan -- Metzger is from Hawaii, Gibb from Utah -- and they earned their first victory in the Golden State. But they shunned any talk about wanting to take down the East Coast team.

“There was one guy cheering ‘East Coast’ the whole game, but we don’t think about that,” Metzger said. “We just tried to stay focused and win, which isn’t easy in this tournament.”

Gibb’s solid net presence and Metzger’s uncanny ability to dig balls were the keys to victory. Gibb had five blocks, including consecutive plays in the second game that gave his team a commanding 15-8 lead.

His blocking caused fits for Lucena, who received the majority of the serves but had 17 kills and 16 hitting errors. Lucena and Dalhausser, who defeated Metzger and Gibb in the Austin Open final this year, acknowledged nerves because of the setting.

“I’m always a little nervous before every game, but this one I was a little more,” Lucena said. “Usually it goes away, but once I started” struggling, “I started putting more and more pressure on myself.”