Surprise! Gambia drops and Chase Budinger, Miles Evans get late World Champs bid
TLAXCALA, MEXICO — They were in but they weren’t.
Through the Great Instagram Grapevine, Chase Budinger and Miles Evans had heard, via Ed Keller, their good friend and makeshift coach for this week’s Beach World Championships, that the team of Sainey Jawo and Jahara Koita of Gambia wasn’t going to make it to Mexico.
Visa trouble.
Which, if true, meant that Budinger and Evans, the No. 1 team on the reserve list, would replace Gambia in a stacked Pool D that includes Brazil’s George Wanderley and Andre Loyola, Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, and European Championship bronze medalists Sergiy Popov and Eduard Reznik of Ukraine.
But the question remained: Was it true?
In the preceding days, Budinger had messaged, one way or another, every team he thought might not be able to make it, including Gambia. Every single team responded yes, that they were on their way.
“I was planning on waiting till 1 p.m. [Thursday] and catching a flight out last night,” Budinger said. He’d been preparing for it long enough. After bowing out for ninth at the Montreal Elite16 in July, he did some quick math in his head and turned to Evans.
“Dang it, watch us be 1 or 2 [on the reserve list]. I guarantee it.”
Sure enough, when the entry list published after the Hamburg Elite16 in late August, there they were, No. 1, needing a miracle. Or so it seemed.
Chase Budinger passes at the Saquarema Challenge in July/Volleyball World photo
The good thing about having a man like Ed Keller on your side is that you also have a beach volleyball encyclopedia in your corner. He knew that in the three or four previous World Championships, something odd had happened at the eleventh hour and a team didn’t show. Last year, in Rome, Sweden pulled out, gifting Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb a spot, and an eventual ninth-place finish. In 2019 in Hamburg, it was Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi who made a drive late into the night after getting the news that they were unexpectedly in the tournament.
“To be honest, I thought the odds were really high,” Evans said.
“Yeah,” Budinger added, laughing, “Miles would have been pissed if we didn’t get in.”
And even after the 1 p.m. deadline came and went with no Gambia in sight, there was one more wrinkle: If Gambia resolved their visa issues, all they needed was a proof of flight that they could make it to the tournament on time for their first match. Didn’t matter that they missed the technical meeting (Gambia, by the way, is the smallest country within mainland Africa and is surrounded by Senegal, except for its western coast on the Atlantic Ocean).
“That made it more sketchy as time got closer,” Budinger said.
The wait continued — until it was, alas, over. Gambia’s visa issues couldn’t be worked out, there would be no last-second dash from Africa to Mexico, and Budinger and Evans were in.
The surprise entry is a win on multiple levels, beginning with the automatic, $3,400 payday and a shot to compete for the biggest title of the year. But it’s also a defibrillator to their Olympic hopes, which once seemed rather distant but now, suddenly, have new life. It’s a faint heartbeat, yes, but it’s a heartbeat nonetheless.
They will have little time to waste. Their first match, against George and Andre, begins at 3:30 local time, less than 24 hours after learning that they were in the event in the first place.
“House money,” Budinger said. And then they left the center court bullring to put the legs up, watch some film, maybe take a quick siesta.
They had a tournament to play.
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