Top 5 surprises of 2010

If anything, it can be said that 2010 was the year of the surprise in beach volleyball. From the rained-out men's final at the AVP season opener in Fort Lauderdale, to Kerri Walsh and Casey Jennings naming their second son Sundance, to Brazilian men winning only one FIVB gold medal, nothing quite materialized as one might have expected. So although it was tough narrowing this list down to five, it wasn't tough choosing No. 1.

5) Juliana and Larissa find little competition
Brazil's Juliana Silva and Larissa Franca are no strangers to winning FIVB World Tour points titles; their latest of five is most certainly not a surprise. They've been the most consistent team on the international stage since they exploded onto the scene in 2004, and this year was no exception.

The surprise is they needed only 12 of 14 events thus far to earn 7,200 total points and officially lock it in. Two more events, China and Thailand, will still take place during the last week of October and first week of November, but Juliana and Larissa technically don't even need to be there, they've already been crowned champions. So will they show up? You bet, if only to build upon their already impressive 1,020-point advantage over second-ranked Maria Antonelli and Talita Antunes, also from Brazil.

4) Dalhausser and Rogers dominate everything
All Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers did was win a record-setting nine FIVB gold medals, end the international season on a 24-match winning streak (their last "loss" was a pool play forfeit to Portugal in Austria after already securing the No. 1 seed), win five AVP titles, and finish their domestic campaign undefeated at 34-0 (their loss over the weekend came in a Parks and Recreation eight-team exhibition in which the world's No. 1 team shared blocking duties for the entire event to "mix it up").

Bottom line, nobody is surprised to see them finish the year ranked at the top of both the FIVB and AVP. What's surprising is a team dominating the sport, any sport, like they did. They're the best in the world right now, maybe ever, and everybody else is simply playing for second place.

3) 2009 world champs struggle, Part I
Germans Jonas Reckermann and Julius Brink had a down year -- for them. Sure, they finished the season ranked fifth overall and flew home to Bavaria following Poland with their fifth medal of the summer, but they failed to win a single event. Perhaps that's more of a direct reflection of Dalhausser and Rogers' season than a commentary on Reckermann and Brink, but either way, the reigning world champions went from winning last year's points title and four events to closing out 2010 with a 17th in Finland.

Something's gotta give, right? Well, that something just happened to be a couple of knees. Both Reckermann and Brink had minor knee surgeries following Prague in June and consequently missed four events leading into Stare Jablonki. With what will hopefully be a clean bill of health in 2011, will we see them return to the top of the podium? They wouldn't be competing if they didn't believe the answer was yes, but my guess is they'll need to take up that request with Dalhausser and Rogers when the time comes.

2) 2009 world champs struggle, Part II
Americans Jen Kessy and April Ross started off the year swimmingly: five consecutive FIVB final fours, two golds, one silver and a bronze. Following Moscow, they were the No. 1-ranked team in the world. Unfortunately, also following Moscow, they never managed to finish on the podium again. Uncharacteristic finishes -- including three 9ths, one 17th and one 25th -- plagued them the rest of the summer and brought into question the team's future as Olympic qualifying commences in 2011 and prolific stars like Kerri Walsh and Nicole Branagh become available on the market.

Branagh played the season with Misty May-Treanor, and their international performances continued the lackluster theme for U.S. women. They ended with a 25th in Poland and 13th in the Netherlands, leaving May-Treanor to ponder her future in the sport.

1) AVP suspends operations
Everyone has an answer for what went down that fateful day in August at AVP headquarters when the doors preemptively closed on the 2010 season. And I mean everyone. But almost no one, except for the few individuals who were actually in the boardroom when the cord got cut, can actually tell the story accurately. Fortunately, I was right around the corner.

What happened to the AVP was a mixture of many things: economy, mismanagement (both former and current), zero marketing and advertising impact, undersold sponsorships, exorbitant operating costs, overpriced television deals, limited onsite revenue streams, frugal fans used to not spending a dime, a nonexistent merchandising and apparel industry, too many Hot Stoves, and most importantly, a heavily unbalanced balance sheet. Bottom line: a failed business model. One that can and will be fixed, mark my words.

But the surprise is that it couldn't make it through the last five tournaments before melting down. And as a result, it initiated these endless and somewhat counter-productive conversations, of which every beach volleyball fan has had at least 500 since August 13, guaranteed. Especially after the "old school/new school" debate concerning the Manhattan Beach Open.

It almost seems as though anarchy has broken loose and our future is only continuing to get cloudier, but as much as we want to hate the AVP for failing to keep alive the sport we love here in the U.S., we need to realize that nothing is ever as easy as it seems. There are people working day and night to find a way to make it all right. The hope is now that the resurgence of the AVP can headline the top 5 surprises of 2011.

Hans Stolfus was an eight-year pro on the AVP Tour.