CHICAGO — Cody Caldwell left Loyola College as a conquering hero on the pinnacle of the lads’s indoor collegiate sport. He’ll return to the Windy Metropolis on Friday for the AVP Gold Series Chicago Open beach volleyball tournament with considerably extra sand swagger than he loved in earlier seasons.
A memorable run to the semifinals with companion Seain Cook dinner within the iconic grandaddy of seaside volleyball, the Manhattan Seaside Open, two weekends in the past in Southern California will do wonders for one’s outlook.
“Third place at Manhattan was an important end and it all the time feels good while you get one thing you possibly can maintain on to,” Caldwell mentioned earlier within the week after a observe session at blustery Oak Road Seaside in 17-mph wind howling off Lake Michigan. “As athletes, we’re by no means actually glad, we’re all the time searching for extra.
“However it’s an important feeling, particularly since it would transfer me up within the ranks. Perhaps make my highway just a little simpler, begin type of carving my means into the highest groups. So I’m tremendous stoked to be again in Chicago. That is my favourite AVP of the yr. I’m fired up for this weekend.”
Chicago followers doubtless can be fired as much as see him.
Caldwell was a key contributor to NCAA champions in 2014 and ’15 with the Loyola Ramblers, groups that included (in ’14 and ’15) Thomas Jaeschke, an Olympic bronze medalist who represented the USA within the Rio and Tokyo Video games, and (in ’15) Jeff Jendryk, a member of the USA nationwide workforce who doubtless can be on the 2024 Olympic roster in Paris.
Caldwell was the Most Excellent Participant of the 2014 NCAA Match, after Loyola (29-1) defeated Stanford at a packed-to-the-rafters Gentile Area, rocking a crowd of 4,485 volleyball crazies. Caldwell cracked 20 kills and made 10 digs within the four-set title match. In 2015, He was named to the all-tournament workforce 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 many greatest NCAA males’s finals in historical past.
However gaining a foothold within the seaside sport proved a problem, even for a participant of Caldwell’s indoor resume. Cody was little greater than a footnote within the first 4 instances he competed within the Chicago AVP.
In 2017, a few years faraway from his glory days with the Ramblers, and between indoor seasons abroad, Caldwell lived in Chicago and labored the summer season organising seaside nets for Chicago Sport & Social Membership leagues.
He and native indoor standout Harshil Thacker tossed their names into the hat for a large on-site single-elimination qualifying match that will ship eight pairs into the 24-team predominant males’s draw at Oak Road Seaside. Seeded 71st out of 79 pairs, Caldwell and Thacker had been bounced within the second spherical.
In 2019, Caldwell and David Vander Meer, seeded seventeenth in a 24-team predominant draw, misplaced their first two matches and had been eradicated, the uno-dos-adios.
In 2021, Cody and Dave Palm had been the eighth seed within the “Q” and dropped their second match, falling two rounds wanting the primary present.
In 2022, Caldwell and veteran Ed Ratledge had been the fifteenth seeds in a 16-team predominant draw, however suffered the ignominy of one other uno-dos-adios.
The 2023 AVP season, nevertheless, has seen Caldwell, at age 30, lastly achieve important traction within the AVP’s middle-level Professional and top-tier Gold Collection, highlighted by making the ultimate 4 on the MBO with Cook dinner.
Caldwell has continued to play indoor volleyball professionally abroad, and this spring he hopped proper into the AVP schedule after having accomplished a six-week season for a workforce named the Kolkata Thunderbolts in a professional league in India.
Caldwell superior to the semifinals of spring Professional Collection tournaments in Miami Seaside and New Orleans, teaming with Chase Frishman, and took first place with Cook dinner within the Tour Collection occasion on the Waupaca Boatride in Wisconsin in early July. Cody’s first AVP title got here in a third-tier Tour Collection cease in Atlantic Metropolis throughout the 2022 season, partnering with USA Olympic indoor gold-medalist David Lee, however his greatest end that season in upper-level tournaments was a ninth with Billy Kolinske on the Central Florida cease in December.
Regardless of “nice outcomes” with Frishman, the partnership fell aside due to “private variations,” Caldwell mentioned.
The 16-team males’s draw on this weekend’s Gold Collection occasion at Oak Road Seaside is loaded with all the American groups within the hunt for 2 spots within the 2024 Paris Olympics. Caldwell and Cook dinner had been seeded solidly in the course of the sector at No. 8. Competitors within the males’s and girls’s draw begins Friday morning on picturesque Oak Road Seaside on the finish of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. It continues by the finals on Sunday afternoon, which can be telecast dwell on the ESPNU channel from 3:30 p.m. to five:30 p.m. Central.
Entering into the semifinal and past right here figures to be an uphill climb for the 6-foot-5 Caldwell and Cook dinner, 31, a local of Scotland who has competed in solely 17 AVP occasions. They reduce a swath by the contenders bracket on the MBO, bouncing groups that included two veteran Olympic seaside gold medalists, Alison Cerutti of Brazil and American legend Phil Dalhausser, however their practice abruptly fell off the rails in a 21-15, 21-6 shellacking courtesy of high seeds Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner.
Crabb and Brunner are seeded No. 2 within the Chicago draw behind 21-year-old sensation Miles Partain and 6-foot-9 Andy Benesh, and are one of many groups we’d see symbolize us within the Paris Video games. So apart from the lopsided margins, shedding to them within the semifinals whereas taking part in in a driving rainstorm as a hurricane bore down on the Los Angeles space wasn’t essentially a “dangerous loss” for Caldwell and Cook dinner.
“A part of me needed to delete that match totally from my mind as a result of it was a tough one. We type of obtained our butts handed to us,” Caldwell admitted. “However you possibly can all the time study from the wins, and particularly from the losses. Seain and I talked it over amongst ourselves and there have been a variety of issues that we might have carried out in a different way, however in the end expertise might be the most important factor.
“These guys are used to being within the semifinals, finals for the final 5 years. They’ve been there for some time. So they simply have numerous extra repetitions in that setting than Seain and I. No matter who we had been taking part in, any of the highest groups, we would have liked to determine a method to play our sport. We misplaced 21-6 (within the second set). It doesn’t matter who you play, you’ve obtained to aspect out in opposition to anyone, and we couldn’t rating any factors.”
Caldwell mentioned that he had not watched a replay of that clunker, “however I most likely will. And I can let you know what I’ll inform myself: Facet out, aspect out. In the event you aspect out, you possibly can play with anyone.”
Trevor Crabb supplied this candid evaluation of Cody’s seaside sport: “Caldwell has a great soar serve. That’s one in all his greatest attributes. He wants to enhance a number of the little issues, his ball management, his setting, his out-of-system performs. However for essentially the most half, he’s a reasonably good all-around participant. Cody has carried out each blocking and protection in a few tournaments this yr. And that’s one of the best ways to get higher on the seaside, to have the ability to play each positions.”
Crabb added that the third-place end on the hallowed sand of Manhattan Seaside “may very well be a turning level” for Caldwell and Cook dinner, who’ve performed all of two tournaments collectively.
“Cody is a good participant and he was additionally an important indoor participant from what I bear in mind,” mentioned Crabb, who received the Chicago title in 2022 whereas teaming with Tri Bourne. “This was type of his breakout match and was his greatest end up to now (within the high Gold Collection). They’d a long term Saturday to get to Sunday in Manhattan, so you would inform they had been just a little gassed. However they’d a few good wins there on Saturday, beating Alison and Phil, and I used to be just a little stunned they beat each of these groups. That may very well be a turning level for them.”
Shane Davis, who coached Caldwell throughout his stellar profession at Loyola, mentioned that he was the important first piece of the puzzle in two NCAA champions.
“Cody was most likely essentially the most proficient volleyball participant I’ve been capable of coach in my 20 years,” mentioned Davis, now the ladies’s coach at Northwestern within the Huge Ten. “His volleyball IQ was simply so excessive. Cody proper out of the gate day one within the gymnasium, it was similar to, ‘Wow, this child is fairly particular. This child simply will get it.’ He might do every part and the workforce noticed that, too.”
Caldwell got here out of Newport Seaside, California, and had obtained intensive ballyhoo as a high-school athlete. One recruiting publication ranked him because the No. 1 boys volleyball participant within the nation, so touchdown him was fairly the coup for Davis’ Midwest program.
“I give Cody a ton of credit score,” Davis mentioned, “as the massive catalyst for our program. Lots of people needed to play with Cody Caldwell. The yr after we obtained Cody, we added Thomas Jaeschke and Nick Olsen and Peter Hutz. Cody laid the muse for that recruiting class. The yr after that, we obtained Jeff Jendryk. However Cody was the primary large title the place all people knew who he was earlier than he even obtained on campus.”
{That a} cerebral participant akin to Cody lastly has climbed the ladder within the AVP doesn’t shock Davis, who made a degree to observe his former Rambler play within the MBO semis on ESPN+.
“Jaeschke was the massive OH1 indoor banger and Cody was the finesse on our workforce, the everyday OH2. Ball management, tremendous environment friendly with what they do, helps the individuals round you be actually, actually good,” Davis mentioned. “The seaside sport fits him so effectively, He executes all the talents and his imaginative and prescient is nice. He’s a volleyball man. He would all the time be within the gymnasium, all the time watching video, all the time doing additional reps. No shock that Cody has put within the work to develop into proficient on the seaside.”
The primary match for Caldwell and Cook dinner on Friday morning looms giant. Their opponents, ninth-seeded Hagen Smith and Logan Webber, additionally had been semifinalists at Manhattan Seaside, and sailed by the winners bracket earlier than hitting the wall in opposition to the Taylors, Crabb and Sander, who earned plaques on the Pier with a sweep in pelting rain in opposition to Trevor Crabb and Brunner.
The winner of the 8-9 match will advance to a probable date in spherical 2 with the ground-breaking duo of Partain and Benesh, who’re 2-for-2 within the AVP (successful the Professional Collection Huntington Seaside and Gold Collection Atlanta occasions) however skipped the MBO to play in Germany. Since late Could, in addition they have surged to No. 1 amongst American groups within the Olympics factors race with a victory on the world tour in an Elite16 match in Switzerland and Elite16 podium finishes within the Czech Republic and Montreal.
The Taylors, who carry the momentum of a career-defining MBO title and had been runners-up in Chicago final yr (dropping the third set of the ultimate 18-16), are seeded third. They’ve received two of the six AVP Professional or Gold Collection tournaments in 2023. Fourth-seeded Chase Budinger and Miles Evans are winless, however have superior to 2 finals. Chaim Schalk and Bourne, seeded fifth, have one AVP victory, however that got here in New Orleans in mid-April.
Climate has been a big situation within the two earlier Gold Collection stops (Atlanta and the MBO), however 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 present a minuscule menace of rain, nevertheless, temperatures are anticipated to soar into the low 90s on the ultimate day.
Click on right here for the Chicago AVP entry list.
