Zana Muno is happy to be home — and competing in the beach volleyball tournament she grew up watching.
The Hermosa Beach Open will return this weekend for the first time since 2019 and will take place from Friday to Sunday, July 8-10. It will be the sixth tournament of the 2022 season, as the Association of Volleyball Professionals returns to a full slate of 16 competitions after abbreviating the previous two years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Hermosa tournament will feature a 16-team main draw, with a combined prize purse of $125,000 for the men’s and women’s tournaments.
“I’m very lucky and grateful to compete where I grew up,” Muno said by phone this week, “and I’m excited to have all my family and friends here.”
The last Hermosa Beach Open took place in 2019.
The pandemic then reduced the 2020 and 2021 AVP seasons to three tournaments each. The “granddaddy” of professional beach volleyball tournaments, the Manhattan Beach Open, returned last year and will again take place in August.
Muno’s first full season on the beach also happened to be the last complete one before the pandemic — and Hermosa Beach was her second tournament. Her partner was Crissy Jones, with whom she grew up playing indoor volleyball.
The duo had to win four qualifying matches to reach the main draw. They became the lowest seeded team to reach the semifinals, in the tournament’s history, and finished third overall.
“We really believed that if we got an opportunity, we would make the most of it,” Muno said. “We played 11 matches in four days. We have never been so exhausted. But I think just to be able to do it at home is definitely something I’ll never forget.”
Muno grew up watching the tournament, she said, but volleyball wasn’t her first love.
Soccer was her main sport until eighth-grade. She attended American Martyrs School in Manhattan Beach from kindergarten through eighth-grade before she followed her brother to Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks so she could focus on multiple sports.
Her father, Lawrence, was a football player and her mother, Kimberly, golfed, but family friends steered Muno toward volleyball.
Beach volleyball legend Mike Dodd is a friend of her father and his wife, Patty Dodd, was Muno’s volleyball coach at America Martyrs during seventh- and eighth-grade. Patty Dodd also took Muno to her first club tryout.
Muno played multiple sports throughout her school years and she wanted to continue that in college. But she was overwhelmed during the college recruiting process, Muno said, so she decided to follow the path of her mentor by playing indoor volleyball at UCLA.
“(UCLA) offered me to play indoor and beach volleyball and I committed that day and I didn’t even tell my parents,” Muno said. “I was just over it.”
And since Patty Dodd went to UCLA, becoming a Bruin allowed Muno to follow in her mentor’s footsteps.
At 16, Muno won the “triple crown” of junior beach volleyball, according to the website Beach Volleyball Database. She was the first player to win the three major Amateur Athletic Union National Tour events, doing it in less than a month.
A year later, at 17 years old, Muno made her pro beach volleyball debut, during the 2013 Huntington Beach tournament, according to BVD.
Muno followed that by competing in the FIVB U-19 World Championship and Youth Olympic Games in 2014, and the FIVB Under 21 World Championships in 2016.
Following her early success at the Hermosa Beach Open during Muno’s first full season in 2019, she and Jones finished in ninth place in the Manhattan Beach, Chicago and Hawaii tournaments to finish that season.
When COVID-19 shut down most of the country, the AVP did as well.
There were three tournaments in Long Beach in 2020.
“We would have loved to have done more,” Muno said, “but given the circumstances I was just glad to get any opportunity to compete.”
The AVP’s three tournaments last year took place in Atlanta, Manhattan Beach and Chicago. Muno and her partners finished third in Atlanta and Chicago and 13th in Manhattan Beach.
In her first tournament this year, Muno and partner Brandie Wilkerson took fifth place in New Orleans. Because she earned enough points last season, Muno did not have to qualify for the Hermosa Beach Open and will start competing in the main draw Friday by the Hermosa Beach Pier.
She will be with new partner and AVP veteran Lauren Fendrick. Wilkerson can not compete in Hermosa Beach because of a scheduling conflict.
“She has so much experience,” Muno said of Fendrick, “and I really feel like it’s a great opportunity for me to learn from her.”
The Hermosa Beach Open will run from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. General admission tickets are free and are on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information, visit AVP.com.
Source: Orange County Register
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