July 23, 2015 The Association of Volleyball Professionals held its first-ever beach volleyball tournament in Manhattan on Friday July 17, with top seeds and partners Jake Gibb, Casey Patterson hitting the sand and winning their match against brothers Madison and Riley McKibbin. A happy Gibb described his feeling.
“Yeah it’s crazy to me and it’s just exciting,”
“I don’t know what to expect from these New York fans, I hope they don’t come out and heckle a lot.”
April Ross’s usual partner, three-time Olympic gold medal winner Kerri Walsh Jennings is nursing a shoulder injury and couldn’t play, but was on the sidelines cheering for Ross and partner Jen Fopma. She also spoke about how she felt.
“I was telling her I’m like a jealous girlfriend watching her play with somebody else. Jen Fopma, I’m so glad she got such a great partner, but yeah it’s hard for me. I want to be out here competing and the fact that I don’t feel a lot of pain, it’s kind of tease because it’s like why aren’t I out there? Why aren’t I sucking it up? But big picture, I need to be smart,” said Walsh.
Walsh is eyeing her fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal in Rio de Janeiro next year but will have to complete this remarkable feat with Ross, who she beat for gold in 2012.
“I am supremely confident,” said Walsh Jennings, on winning the gold in Rio de Janeiro.
“April and I have so much potential and we’ve just scratched the surface. Obviously I need to get healthy and then I feel like right before I got hurt we turned a corner and we are truly playing as a team for the first time in a year and a half. We’re both great individual athletes who both know how to play but being on a team is something different. So I feel like we turned that corner and now I need to get healthy and we can keep working on that.”