May 10, 2022: Andy Benesh wins his 1st-ever AVP, Phil Dalhausser wins his 60th.
photo: @andybenesh on Instagram
Andy Benesh is a PVHS Volleyball alumni who went on to play for USC.
Andy has played professional beach volleyball since 2018. He was a First Team All-American at Palos Verdes High School as well as being a member of Volleyball Magazine’s Fab 50 list.
Andy played indoor volleyball at USC 2014-17, and played professionally in Switzerland.
He was a member of 2014 and 2015 U.S. Men’s U21 National Teams.
From volleyballmag.com | By Travis Mewhirter,
The beginning of many great stories begins with quitting.
Andy Benesh had just begun his.
Benesh’s rise has not exactly been a blink-and-you-missed-it type ascent. It’s taken a few years, and it has been hard. In 2019, he fell in qualifiers in Huntington Beach (second round), Austin (final round), and in the first round in New York and Seattle, back-to-back. Throughout, the once-aspiring financial advisor had almost exactly zero dollars to his name.
At an AVP Next Gold tournament in Chicago, in 2019, he lost in the semifinals with Adam Roberts. Roberts is somewhat famous for his competitiveness, and within minutes, he was gone from North Ave. Benesh was there, though, smile as wide as a cantaloupe, because, as he proclaimed loudly, “I just tripled my net worth!”
His check might have been for 200 bucks.
Such is the price of climbing the ladder in beach volleyball, a sport famous for its lifestyle and notorious for its lack of money to fund it.
Follow Andy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andybenesh/
#andybeneshvolleyball