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AVP Gold Series Chicago Open a homecoming for high-flying Caldwell

Cody Caldwell/Rick Atwood photo

CHICAGO — Cody Caldwell left Loyola University as a conquering hero at the pinnacle of the men’s indoor collegiate game. He will return to the Windy City on Friday for the AVP Gold Series Chicago Open beach volleyball tournament with substantially more sand swagger than he enjoyed in previous seasons.

A memorable run to the semifinals with partner Seain Cook in the iconic grandaddy of beach volleyball, the Manhattan Beach Open, two weekends ago in Southern California will do wonders for one’s outlook.

“Third place at Manhattan was a great finish and it always feels good when you get something you can hold on to,” Caldwell said earlier in the week after a practice session at blustery Oak Street Beach in 17-mph wind howling off Lake Michigan. “As athletes, we’re never really satisfied, we’re always looking for more.

“But it’s a great feeling, especially since it might move me up in the ranks. Maybe make my road a little easier, start kind of carving my way into the top teams. So I’m super stoked to be back in Chicago. This is my favorite AVP of the year. I’m fired up for this weekend.”

Chicago fans likely will be fired up to see him.

Caldwell was a key contributor to NCAA champions in 2014 and ’15 with the Loyola Ramblers, teams that included (in ’14 and ’15) Thomas Jaeschke, an Olympic bronze medalist who represented the USA in the Rio and Tokyo Games, and (in ’15) Jeff Jendryk, a member of the USA national team who likely will be on the 2024 Olympic roster in Paris.

Cody Caldwell/Mark Rigney photo

Caldwell was the Most Outstanding Player of the 2014 NCAA Tournament, after Loyola (29-1) defeated Stanford at a packed-to-the-rafters Gentile Arena, rocking a crowd of 4,485 volleyball crazies. Caldwell cracked 20 kills and made 10 digs in the four-set title match. In 2015, He was named to the all-tournament team after the Ramblers (28-2) made it back-to-back titles, topping Chicago-area rival Lewis in a five-set thriller that ranks among the best NCAA men’s finals in history.

But gaining a foothold in the beach game proved a challenge, even for a player of Caldwell’s indoor resume. Cody was little more than a footnote in the first four times he competed in the Chicago AVP.

In 2017, a couple of years removed from his glory days with the Ramblers, and between indoor seasons overseas, Caldwell lived in Chicago and worked the summer setting up beach nets for Chicago Sport & Social Club leagues.

He and local indoor standout Harshil Thacker tossed their names into the hat for a massive on-site single-elimination qualifying tournament that would send eight pairs into the 24-team main men’s draw at Oak Street Beach. Seeded 71st out of 79 pairs, Caldwell and Thacker were bounced in the second round.

In 2019, Caldwell and David Vander Meer, seeded 17th in a 24-team main draw, lost their first two matches and were eliminated, the uno-dos-adios.

In 2021, Cody and Dave Palm were the eighth seed in the “Q” and dropped their second match, falling two rounds short of the main show.

In 2022, Caldwell and veteran Ed Ratledge were the 15th seeds in a 16-team main draw, but suffered the ignominy of another uno-dos-adios.

The 2023 AVP season, however, has seen Caldwell, at age 30, finally gain significant traction in the AVP’s middle-level Pro and top-tier Gold Series, highlighted by making the final four at the MBO with Cook.

Caldwell has continued to play indoor volleyball professionally overseas, and this spring he hopped right into the AVP schedule after having completed a six-week season for a team named the Kolkata Thunderbolts in a pro league in India.

Caldwell advanced to the semifinals of spring Pro Series tournaments in Miami Beach and New Orleans, teaming with Chase Frishman, and took first place with Cook in the Tour Series event at the Waupaca Boatride in Wisconsin in early July. Cody’s first AVP title came in a third-tier Tour Series stop in Atlantic City during the 2022 season, partnering with USA Olympic indoor gold-medalist David Lee, but his best finish that season in upper-level tournaments was a ninth with Billy Kolinske at the Central Florida stop in December.

Despite “great results” with Frishman, the partnership fell apart because of “personal differences,” Caldwell said.

The 16-team men’s draw in this weekend’s Gold Series event at Oak Street Beach is loaded with all of the American teams in the hunt for two spots in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Caldwell and Cook were seeded solidly in the middle of the field at No. 8. Competition in the men’s and women’s draw starts Friday morning on picturesque Oak Street Beach at the end of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. It continues through the finals on Sunday afternoon, which will be telecast live on the ESPNU channel from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Central.

Cody Caldwell, right, and Seain Cook on Oak Street Beach on Wednesday/Larry Hamel photo

Getting into the semifinal and beyond here figures to be an uphill climb for the 6-foot-5 Caldwell and Cook, 31, a native of Scotland who has competed in only 17 AVP events. They cut a swath through the contenders bracket at the MBO, bouncing teams that included two veteran Olympic beach gold medalists, Alison Cerutti of Brazil and American legend Phil Dalhausser, but their train abruptly fell off the rails in a 21-15, 21-6 shellacking courtesy of top seeds Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner.

Crabb and Brunner are seeded No. 2 in the Chicago draw behind 21-year-old sensation Miles Partain and 6-foot-9 Andy Benesh, and are one of the teams we might see represent us in the Paris Games. So other than the lopsided margins, losing to them in the semifinals while playing in a driving rainstorm as a hurricane bore down on the Los Angeles area wasn’t necessarily a “bad loss” for Caldwell and Cook.

“Part of me wanted to delete that match entirely from my brain because it was a rough one. We kind of got our butts handed to us,” Caldwell admitted. “But you can always learn from the wins, and especially from the losses. Seain and I talked it over amongst ourselves and there were a number of things that we could have done differently, but ultimately experience is probably the biggest thing.

“Those guys are used to being in the semifinals, finals for the last five years. They’ve been there for a while. So they just have countless more repetitions in that setting than Seain and I. Regardless of who we were playing, any of the top teams, we needed to figure out a way to play our game. We lost 21-6 (in the second set). It doesn’t matter who you play, you’ve got to side out against anybody, and we couldn’t score any points.”

Caldwell said that he had not watched a replay of that clunker, “but I probably will. And I can tell you what I will tell myself: Side out, side out. If you side out, you can play with anybody.”

Trevor Crabb offered this candid assessment of Cody’s beach game: “Caldwell has a good jump serve. That’s one of his best attributes. He needs to improve some of the little things, his ball control, his setting, his out-of-system plays. But for the most part, he’s a pretty good all-around player. Cody has done both blocking and defense in a couple of tournaments this year. And that’s the best way to get better on the beach, to be able to play both positions.”

Crabb added that the third-place finish on the hallowed sand of Manhattan Beach “could be a turning point” for Caldwell and Cook, who have played all of two tournaments together.

“Cody is a great player and he was also a great indoor player from what I remember,” said Crabb, who won the Chicago title in 2022 while teaming with Tri Bourne. “This was kind of his breakout tournament and was his best finish to date (in the top Gold Series). They had a long run Saturday to get to Sunday in Manhattan, so you could tell they were a little gassed. But they had a couple of good wins there on Saturday, beating Alison and Phil, and I was a little surprised they beat both of those teams. That could be a turning point for them.”

Shane Davis, who coached Caldwell during his stellar career at Loyola, said that he was the essential first piece of the puzzle in two NCAA champions.

“Cody was probably the most talented volleyball player I’ve been able to coach in my 20 years,” said Davis, now the women’s coach at Northwestern in the Big Ten. “His volleyball IQ was just so high. Cody right out of the gate day one in the gym, it was just like, ‘Wow, this kid is pretty special. This kid just gets it.’ He could do everything and the team saw that, too.”

Caldwell came out of Newport Beach, California, and had received extensive ballyhoo as a high-school athlete. One recruiting publication ranked him as the No. 1 boys volleyball player in the country, so landing him was quite the coup for Davis’ Midwest program.

“I give Cody a ton of credit,” Davis said, “as the big catalyst for our program. A lot of people wanted to play with Cody Caldwell. The year after we got Cody, we added Thomas Jaeschke and Nick Olsen and Peter Hutz. Cody laid the foundation for that recruiting class. The year after that, we got Jeff Jendryk. But Cody was the first big name where everybody knew who he was before he even got on campus.”

That a cerebral player such as Cody finally has climbed the ladder in the AVP does not surprise Davis, who made a point to watch his former Rambler play in the MBO semis on ESPN+.

“Jaeschke was the big OH1 indoor banger and Cody was the finesse on our team, the typical OH2. Ball control, super efficient with what they do, helps the people around you be really, really good,” Davis said. “The beach game suits him so well, He executes all the skills and his vision is great. He’s a volleyball guy. He would always be in the gym, always watching video, always doing extra reps. No surprise that Cody has put in the work to become proficient on the beach.”

The first match for Caldwell and Cook on Friday morning looms large. Their opponents, ninth-seeded Hagen Smith and Logan Webber, also were semifinalists at Manhattan Beach, and sailed through the winners bracket before hitting the wall against the Taylors, Crabb and Sander, who earned plaques on the Pier with a sweep in pelting rain against Trevor Crabb and Brunner.

The winner of the 8-9 match will advance to a likely date in round 2 with the ground-breaking duo of Partain and Benesh, who are 2-for-2 in the AVP (winning the Pro Series Huntington Beach and Gold Series Atlanta events) but skipped the MBO to play in Germany. Since late May, they also have surged to No. 1 among American teams in the Olympics points race with a victory on the world tour in an Elite16 tournament in Switzerland and Elite16 podium finishes in the Czech Republic and Montreal.

The Taylors, who carry the momentum of a career-defining MBO title and were runners-up in Chicago last year (dropping the third set of the final 18-16), are seeded third. They have won two of the six AVP Pro or Gold Series tournaments in 2023. Fourth-seeded Chase Budinger and Miles Evans are winless, but have advanced to two finals. Chaim Schalk and Bourne, seeded fifth, have one AVP victory, but that came in New Orleans in mid-April.

Weather has been a significant issue in the two previous Gold Series stops (Atlanta and the MBO), but the outlook for the Labor Day Weekend says the AVP will catch a break. The forecasts on the west shore of Lake Michigan for Friday, Saturday and Sunday show a minuscule threat of rain, however, temperatures are expected to soar into the low 90s on the final day.

Click here for the Chicago AVP entry list.

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