Dalhausser & Lucena
In the very short time they have had since the two paired up halfway through the season, Dalhausser & Lucena managed to accomplish enough on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour to leave a spectacular year behind and to receive this high honor from their national federation.
Phil Dalhausser & Nick Lucena, both 35-year-old at the time, joined forces for their first FIVB event together in 10 years and first tournament together since 2011 at the Long Beach Grand Slam in mid-August and immediately claimed their first medal – silver on home sand. They followed up with a fifth-place finish at the Olsztyn Grand Slam in Poland, another silver, this time from the Sochi Open in Russia, and medaled at every World Tour event through the rest of 2015.
Their first gold came from the Xiamen Open in China in late September. Dalhausser & Lucena claimed silver at the World Tour Finals at home in Fort Lauderdale, gold at the Puerto Vallarta Open in Mexico and silver at the Qatar Open in Doha.
To top this, the American duo also triumphed on the highest step of the podium at the NORCECA Continental Tour event in Trinidad and Tobago in late November.
Earlier this month Lucena was named the USA Volleyball 2015 Men’s Beach Player of the Year, his first. While for him, this is also the first time to be part of the Beach Team of the Year, his partner Dalhausser is already quite used to it. Last year he received the same honor together with Sean Rosenthal, after having done so in 2008 and 2010 with Todd Rogers.
“The cards were stacked against us because every tournament we played in we had to do well,” Dalhausser said. “We did that, so 2015 was a success for us because we put ourselves in a great position to qualify for the Olympics. I feel like one of those spots is ours to lose now, even though we are not leading in points. We have seven good finishes. Now it is going to be nice to get two months of a training season to work on a couple things. We did not get to train very much in 2015 because we got together so late in the year. Hopefully we will have a more polished game – that is the plan. We will be more on the same page about small things that we need to work on.“
“I have had great partnerships playing with Matt Fuerbringer and Sean Scott, being on the level of those guys. They are experience, three of the best blockers in the world,” said Lucena. “I am having a lot of fun playing with Phil because we started our careers playing together and it is cool to see how far we have come since playing at Florida State and UCF. I am enjoying it and am thankful and hopefully we will do better next year. We are going to be a good team. We will compete at every tournament. We are going to be better than we were this year and I am excited about it. I am looking forward to competing and hopefully we make the Olympics.“
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