The field is set

LOCALS HOLDREN-SCOFIELD AND CANTRELL - NESTLERODE MAKE TODAY'S MAIN DRAW

By JOHN ZANT
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER

	MIKE ELIASON/NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS Patti Scofield, left, jousts at the net with Angie Simpson. Scofield and Jen Holdren cruised through Friday's qualifying rounds.

It was Q-Day on West Beach for 123 pairs of volleyball players Friday. Sixteen of the teams survived the barrage of spikes under a brilliant sun to qualify for the main draw of the $175,000 AVP Santa Barbara Open.

Among the winners were the Santa Barbara-based teams of Jen Holdren and Patti Scofield, who swept their way to the highest seed (18th in the women's draw) of all the qualifiers; and on the men's side, Dan Fisher-Chris Guigliano and Blake Cantrell-Tim Nestlerode.

They will join the 48 pre-qualified teams to form 32-team brackets for the men's and women's tournaments starting at 9 a.m. today. The nationally televised finals will begin at 2:15 p.m. Sunday.

The rest of the tournament will be double-elimination, but Friday's action was a merciless one-and-done affair. Some teams got barely a half hour of playing time for their $100 entry fee.

But they all came out to the beach with hopes of making it to the big time. It was like going through spring training for a day and finding yourself in a major league game the next day.

Cantrell and Nestlerode, who were seeded 56th out of 70 teams in the men's qualifier, were shocked to be one of the eight that made it through.

"I'm dead tired, and I'll be playing the best team in the world at 9 a.m. tomorrow," said Cantrell, an All-CIF player at Santa Barbara High 10 years ago who finished his college career at UCSB. "I need to drink about three gallons of water just to stay alive."

He expected to be drinking something else Friday night rather than getting ready to face top-seeded Jake Gibb and Stein Metzger in a first-round match today.

Cantrell lost 25 pounds to get in shape for this shot at beach volleyball glory.

"I'm 27 now, I graduated from college five years ago," he said. "I realized this was my last chance to try this. The alternative was getting fatter. So I stopped eating three burritos a day."

Nestlerode, a 6-foot-5 player who came here from Lake Tahoe, appreciated his partner's sacrifice.

"He told me that if we make it to Saturday, he'd give 51 percent of our entry fee back to me," Cantrell said.

They made it by winning three matches, all in straight sets.

"We got really, really lucky," Cantrell said. "The best teams got knocked out of our draw."

	Jen Holdren makes the kind of play the dashed the hopes of Erica Menzel and Angie Simpson in the second round.

Local high school grads Fisher (Dos Pueblos) and Guigliano (Santa Barbara) posted three solid wins. They are seeded 27th in the main draw and will face No. 6 Eric Fonoimoana and Mike Lambert, the winners of last year's AVP tournament here.

Not so lucky was former UCSB player Chad Convis. In the final round of qualifying, he and Andrew Vazquez ran into Adam Johnson, winner of 44 beach tournaments. Johnson, who's coming back from a serious foot injury at the age of 40, advanced with teammate Brian Corso, 21-17 and 21-17.

Ran Kumgisky, a former Israeli national player, and Matt Prosser eliminated local teams Shane Cervantes-Arri Jeschke and Ben Koski-Michael Rupp. Kumgisky-Prosser will face the second-seeded team of Goleta's Dax Holdren and Jeff Nygaard in today's opening round.

On the women's side, Santa Barbara's Erica Menzel and Angie Simpson pulled out a 25-23, 22-20 victory in their first match, but then they had the misfortune of drawing Holdren and Scofield.

Holdren had just learned that escrow has closed on the house she and her husband Dax have purchased. She and Scofield closed out Menzel and Simpson, 21-10 and 21-15.

"It was hard," Menzel said. "It sucks that two local teams have to play each other in the second round."

Holdren and Scofield succeeded in qualifying for the third straight tournament.

"Sunday, here we come, I hope," said Scofield.

The small first day crowds at the qualifying courts.

To get there for the first time, she and Holdren will have to be one of the top eight teams after today's eliminations. They will face 15th-seeded Daven Allison, another local player, and Kimberly Coleman to start out.

Other local players in action today include Todd Rogers, who is reunited with Sean Scott after concentrating on his UCSB coaching duties last month. Rogers and Dax Holdren have both played in three championship matches in their hometown -- twice as partners -- but neither has tasted the final victory here.

New Santa Barbara residents Phil Dalhausser-Nick Lucena are seeded fourth after winning the Austin Open three weeks ago. The legendary Karch Kiraly is seeded seventh in his first tournament with partner Adam Jewell.

Olympic champions Misty May-Kerri Walsh, 3-0 in this year's AVP tournaments, top the women's bracket.

Former UCSB stars Courtney Guerra-Brooke Niles are seeded 12th.

e-mail: jzant@newspress.com

back to top »