Bummin It

The Ben Koski & Jeff Minc story: What it's like in the AVP qualifier

By Blake Cantrell

Part 1 of 2

I was enjoying my morning coffee and the beautiful Santa Barbara morning when who should come flying down my driveway but AVPers Ben Koski and Jeff Minc.

They pulled up to my house in a rented Hyundai Sonata with big smiles on their grubby faces and a penchant for laying the horn down hard. It was time to make the long and miserable trek to Glendale, Arizona for the next AVP event and I was tagging along for the ride to document the whole thing, escape my regular office existence and enjoy a beverage in the 100-plus degree heat.

We packed up the new low budget rental car and headed down to Hermosa Beach to pickup fellow volleyer Peter Jordan who was overjoyed to be the 4th person in the already crammed midsized sedan. It was a lovely Wednesday and we couldn't wait to drive 6 hours while enduring sweltering heat along the 2-lanes of flat, straight roads that makeup the hellish drive from Los Angeles to Arizona.

During the drive I explained that the piece I was writing for BVM was about how hard it is for some of the lower-tier main draw and qualifier players to compete on the AVP tour and make any monetary gains. To see if my assumption that most tournaments are a losing financial proposition for all but the very top finishers. I had Ben Koski agree to keep an ongoing log of his expenses during the entire trip. Then at the end of the trip we could compare his money lost to his overall money gained and know once and for all how much he was in the black or red.

Fast forward to that evening and we have made it through the wasteland to Glendale and the AVP parking lot site with enough daylight left to get in some practice reps on the sandbox-like courts. Our legs are cramped and tight from sitting in the hot car all day and the sun soon goes down so we retire back to our hotel down the road known as the Quality Inn.

I've never known a hotel name to be so unintentionally ironic as this one was by being called the ‘Quality Inn'. If your idea of ‘quality' is staying in a hotel in a neighborhood full of bums that is directly adjacent to the train tracks and has no windows facing outside of the building then welcome to your own personal Trump Towers, my friend! This was the kind of place where you bring everything of value from your car into the hotel room and when you leave for the day you take them with you, too. It was in no uncertain terms a dump, but it did fit our budget.

It really didn't matter though as we were all dead tired, and three of us had to get up early the next morning to play in the qualifier. At that point any shelter with air conditioning was looking quite hospitable. The only problem was that there were four of us, two beds and management didn't allow rollaway beds claiming they were a fire hazard. Koski and I took to sleeping on the floor with a pillow and blanket only combo and secretly cursed Peter and Jeff's names in our dreams that night.

Thursday morning rolled around and the tourney was underway. Koski and Minc strolled through the qualifier as expected and Peter hit some bad luck and ended his day after the second round. In a perfect world Peter would now takeoff back to his regular job and make some money but seeing as his only means to Arizona was with us he was obligated to stay until Koski and Minc finished up. We head out to a solid dinner at a Mexican place known as La Pinata and wrapped the night up by passing out hard after sweating it out on the asphalt beach all day.

The next morning, Peter and I formed a roaring crowd of two for Ben and Jeff as they upset Ryan Mariano and Larry Witt for the second weekend in a row. Only problem was that this was a small draw, and winning your first game doesn't automatically move you out of a 17th place. You need to win your next match as well, and it's usually against a solid team. This was no exception as they faced with Matt Fuerbringer/Sean Scott. Our heroes Ben and Jeff were oversized in that one and dropped that match in two and were now faced with an afternoon showdown with Paul Baxter/Canyon Ceman.

By this time, Pete had grown overly tired of Glendale and was desperate to return to his job rather than face another day in Arizona, so he left on a one-way flight back to LAX. Luckily, Rob “Bob-O” More, brother of Michelle More, and his buddy Dave had flown in to take in the action as well as take Pete's place along the sidelines. I was thankful they had appeared as I didn't want to have to die alone in this 100-plus degree oven. At the very least I'd now have someone to bury me and say a few kind words after I passed out dead of heat exhaustion in parking stall 386, just south of Court 4.

Part 2 of AVP Glendale qualifier saga continues ...

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If you've ever wondered what happens in the VIP tents around the AVP stadium court, hear you go. As Dave Licht chugs, Jeff Minc and Blake Cantrell take in the action. That's Mark Williams seated to the left and Rob "Bob-O" More standing in the background.

Photo: Frank Kaiser

The boys whoop it up. From left: Ben Koski; "Bob-O"; Licht; Blake; Mike Rangel, the owner of Plyo City and the American Sports Center; and Willy.

Photo: Frank Kaiser