Waves on the beach

Parker Kalmbach of the Pepperdine men’s volleyball team and Waves alumna Stevi Robinson represented the U.S. at the NORCECA Beach Tour event Sept. 28-30 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif.
Overall, there were sixteen men’s teams and thirteen women’s teams competing at the Beach Volleyball Circuit event, and the international competition included teams from Canada, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Saint Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos and the Virgin Islands.
Robinson, who graduated from Pepperdine in 2012 and is currently a graduate student at the University of Southern California, paired with Eve Ettinger from USC at the competition.
Together with his partner, 24-year-old University of New Mexico graduate Adam Cabbage, Kalmbach managed to finish second in their pool with a 2-1 record.
Kalmbach and Cabbage defeated Marc Lomeli and Anthony Pippen of the U.S. Virgin Islands team 2-0 (21-16, 21-15) on Saturday, Sept. 29. Unfortunately, the USA4 team of Cabbage and Kalmbach was defeated by Avery Drost and Jesse Rambis of USA5 Team (16-21, 25-23, 15-13). on Sunday.
The loss prevented them from moving to the quarterfinals against Mexico.
“There were five USA teams, and all of them were really good players,” Kalmbach said. “Canada had a really good national team, who played in the World Tour. We played Canada once; they got seventh at the National tour before. We barely lost to them, but they are older and more experienced. We beat El Salvador and Virgin Islands to get second place in the pool,” said Kalmbach.
“It was very good experience to play at the international championship,” he added.
Kalmbach is planning to continue his sports career after graduation and go pro in beach volleyball.