AVP returns this weekend after three-week break

Following a four-week layoff due to the Summer Olympic Games, the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) Crocs Tour continues today with Crocs Cup Shootout beach volleyball tournament at Mason, Ohio. The event concludes Sunday.

Rachel Wacholder (Laguna Beach High, 1993) and partner Tyra Turner (Fort Myers Beach, Fla.) will be out to win their second tournament on the 2008 tour. The pair captured their first AVP tourney title this year when they won the Crocs Slam San Diego on Aug. 3. That tournament was the last AVP event before the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Wacholder and Turner were the No. 5 seed in San Diego and defeated the No. 2 seeded team of Annett Davis and Jenny Johnson Jordan, 21-16, 19-21, 15-10, in the title match. It was the best finish of the season for the duo, whose previous top finish was second at the Huntington Beach Open on May 3. Wacholder and Turner currently rank ninth in the women’s 2008 Crocs Cup standings. The tour’s No. 1 team, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, won Olympic gold in women’s beach volleyball last week in Beijing.

NBC will air the women’s final on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. The men’s final will air on FSN the following week.

“” Mike Sciacca