Representing Santa Barbara and Team U.S.A.

On Friday, July 26, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will open with a unique parade of athletes. Instead of marching around a stadium track, each national delegation will be floating down the Seine on a boat.

U.S. beach volleyball player Miles Evans relishes the prospect, even though he conceded, “We’ll be standing for eight hours.”

Evans is the latest athlete to come out of the volleyball culture of Santa Barbara and earn a shot at Olympic glory. He and Chase Budinger, a former NBA player, went down to the final weeks of their two-year partnership to secure the last U.S. berth in the Paris beach tournament.

The 34-year-old Evans played on the indoor teams at Dos Pueblos High, SBCC, and UCSB before following his bliss to the two-man beach game. He was a journeyman for a dozen years, playing with 22 different partners before hooking up with Budinger in 2023 with the intent of qualifying for the Olympics. To do so, they hit the World Beach Pro Tour — 24 different events in 13 countries, including Brazil, China, Thailand, Portugal, Latvia, and Qatar — picking up valuable points with 16 top-10 finishes. They won their only championship last November at Haikou, China, defeating Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner, another former UCSB Gaucho.

Along the way, Evans said on The Grit, a streaming online show, that there were “a million ups and downs. The whole long process was the most stressful thing I’ve been through.”

Budinger called it “two years scraping and clawing trying to get to the top of the mountain.”

The site of the beach volleyball competition in Paris will be a 12,000-seat stadium in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

Budinger, 36, was a prep standout in volleyball and basketball, concentrating on hoops at Arizona and entering the NBA as a second-round draft pick. After playing for seven seasons with four different teams, he retired from the hardwood and turned to pro beach volleyball in 2018. At 6’7”, Budinger has found an ideal partner in the 6’4” Evans.

They both live in the South Bay near Manhattan Beach, but Evans remembers where he came from. “I want to represent Santa Barbara like Todd Rogers and Karch Kiraly did,” he said.

Kiraly came out of Santa Barbara High and UCLA to become the most decorated volleyball player in Olympic history. He won gold medals with the U.S. men’s team in 1984 and 1988 – when Dos Pueblos alum Doug Partie was a teammate – and he collected his third gold with Kent Steffes in the inaugural Olympic beach tournament at Atlanta in 1996.

The tradition continued in 2000 when former UCSB team captain Eric Fonoimoana claimed a gold medal with Dain Blanton at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, and in 2004 Dax Holdren came out of San Marcos High and SBCC to compete in Athens, where he and Stein Metzger finished fifth.

Rogers played at San Marcos and UCSB and reached the pinnacle at the 2008 Beijing Games, storming to the gold medal with Phil Dalhausser.

Kiraly returned to the Olympics in 2016 as head coach of the U.S. women’s indoor team, guiding them to a bronze medal in Rio de Janeiro. He committed to a quest for the gold medal at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games, and the Americans achieved it in what Kiraly described as “emotionally the most powerful” of his five Olympic excursions. “It was immensely satisfying to play a role in helping the U.S.A. women win their first gold medal in 13 tries,” he said.

Kiraly is still at the helm as the Americans go to Paris as defending champions but not ranked among the favorites after a season of international competition that was dominated by Italy.

“We have to shore up a few things,” Kiraly said before the U.S. swept the Netherlands in their last pre-Olympic match at Long Beach two weeks ago. “I’ve never had to take advantage of the underdog position.”

Eight players return from the Tokyo champions, including the outstanding libero Justine Wong-Orantes and 37-year-old outside hitter Jordan Larson, playing in her fourth Olympics.

“It’s an incredible group of people to work with,” Kiraly said. “They’ve had disappointments and suffering to get where they are.”

The team U.S.A. women’s water polo journey is explored in our cover story, and men’s water polo is another sport where Santa Barbara has had a presence in the Olympic Games — especially in 1984 and ’88 when Terry Schroeder (San Marcos High) was a key player in the U.S. taking two silver medals. Chris Segesman (Dos Pueblos) was on the U.S. team in Athens, and Schroeder coached the men to another silver medal in 2008.

Ben Hallock, born in Santa Barbara, is a 6’6”, 245-pound force on the 2024 U.S. water polo team. Paris will be his third Olympics. He grew up in Westlake Village and was an NCAA champion at Stanford. His father, Tom, was a lineman from Santa Ynez who played in the Rose Bowl for USC, and his uncle Ben Hallock was a football coach at Santa Barbara High and Carpinteria.

Another Olympic veteran is New Zealand’s Michael Boxall, a four-year standout (2007-10) on UCSB’s soccer team. Boxall played for the Kiwis in the 2008 Olympics and was also chosen for the 2020 team but was injured. The center back is an “over-age” (older than 23) player on the 2024 squad, known as the “OlyWhites,” and they will face the U.S. in France on July 27.

4-1-1

Here is when our local Olympians are set to compete during the first week of competition. 

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. Greece on Saturday, July 27 at 6:35 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. Spain on Monday, July 29 at 6:35 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. Italy on Wednesday, July 31 at 9:30 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. France on Friday, August 2 at 9:30 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Volleyball vs. China on Monday, July 29 at 8 a.m.

Team USA Women’s Volleyball vs. Serbia on Wednesday, July 31 at 8 a.m.

Team USA Men’s Beach Volleyball (Evans and Budinger) vs. France on Monday, July 29 at 7 a.m.

Team USA Men’s Beach Volleyball (Evans and Budinger) vs. Netherlands on Tuesday, July 30 at 11 a.m

Team USA Men’s Beach Volleyball (Evans and Budinger) vs. Spain on Friday, August 2 at 6 a.m.

All games are broadcast on NBC Peacock.