Brazilian Team Finally Draws Line in the Sand

The streak, shockingly, had reached 10.

Jose Loiola and Emanuel Rego, the beach volleyball team that could practically win at will in such places as the Canary Islands and Klagenfurt, Austria, had been denied a championship on the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals tour since July 1998.

While the international tour helped the Brazilian duo become the first team to qualify for this year’s Olympics, the AVP had been anything but helpful.

Until Sunday.

Loiola and Rego defeated Dax Holdren and Todd Rogers, 15-6, to win the Hermosa Beach Open and put an end to their 10-tournament drought in the AVP.

“It’s been too long,” Loiola said. “It was time for us to come here and show we can still play.”

They did. And they showed they can serve, too.

Loiola and Rego each had three aces, Loiola’s coming consecutively to turn a close match into a 9-4 lead.

Holdren and Rogers scored only two more points the rest of the match.

“I don’t think I can recall anyone getting six aces against us,” Holdren said. “If they can do that against everybody, they’d win every single tournament.”

Loiola and Rego have dominated the Federation Internationale de Volleyball, the tour that determines which teams qualify for the Olympics, but they have faltered domestically.

“Finally, we won’t have people asking us when we’re going to win [an AVP event],” Loiola said.

Canyon Ceman and Brian Lewis had the best shot at defeating Loiola-Rego, but they couldn’t hold onto a 6-0 lead and lost, 15-11, in the finals of the winners’ bracket.

“When you get off to a great start, obviously you want to finish it,” Ceman said. “We needed to do a better job of that.”

In the Beach Volleyball America women’s tour, third-seeded Carrie Busch and Leanne Schuster defeated Nancy Mason and Rachel Wacholder, 15-13, to win their first pro title.

Busch-Schuster took advantage of a depleted field, with four of the top five BVA teams playing in a FIVB tournament in Italy.

“You always want to beat the best to be the best,” Schuster said. “But them being gone gives us a chance to get into the semifinals and then the finals instead of just knocking on the door.”