As competition starts for Sunday's final, Brad Keenan must be pinching himself. A year and a half ago, the 25-year-old Orange County native was crunching numbers for an accounting firm. Now he's crunching a volleyball in hopes of winning the Cuervo Gold Crown Huntington Beach Open with his new partner, John Hyden.
"I just got lucky," Keenan said. "I kinda dropped out for two years and I got sick of sitting in a cubicle, and got myself back into shape and got lucky enough for John Mayer to call me up, got me on the beach, and started to learn the game.
Learn it he did. In 2006, Keenan won the AVP Rookie of the Year award and partnered with Mayer. They got the volleyball world talking when the pair went through the 2006 qualifier in Hermosa Beach and finished third, tying an AVP record for the highest finish by a qualifier.
For Keenan, it's been like a dream, but it started as a nightmare. The four-time All-American at Pepperdine had graduated just before the Waves won a national championship. After injuring his shoulder, Keenan used his finance degree to get a job at State Street, a financial firm in Irvine, Calif.
"I figured that maybe I was done with volleyball, get a real job and do that," Keenan said.
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