Maddison McKibbin's wild two years ending with a cherry on top: Getting married

Riley McKibbin couldn’t sleep on Tuesday night. Too excited about what was to come the next morning, though the event causing the restless evening is a bit different than what has been the norm. It was not the eve of an AVP tournament. Not the night before a four-man World Championship. Wasn’t the leadup to a gold medal match in snow volleyball nor was it the final moments before a flight would take him and his brother, Maddison, to an invitational in the Maldives. It had nothing to do with the Amazing Race, or a trip to Thailand, or his infant daughter, Storm.

Maddison McKibbin was getting married.

“Seriously feels like Christmas Eve,” Riley said.

The previous two years have been a whirlwind beyond anything the affable and bearded brothers of beach volleyball could have imagined. Heck, the previous half-decade has been beyond anything they could have imagined. A final injury in Greece led Maddison to Riley’s kitchen in Italy, where he was setting for CMC Ravenna. It was in that kitchen that the brothers, raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, decided they would return to their roots: They were going to give beach volleyball a shot.

But not just playing beach volleyball. They’re smart, the McKibbins, not the type to simply follow the tried and true but positively brutal path of so many before them. They’d be groundbreakers, though the size of their immense impact could have never been fully foreseen, even by the most optimistic of prognosticators.

A YouTube channel that began mostly by winging it has become one of the largest media presences in the sport of beach volleyball. A 42-second video on the hop-step defence in beach volleyball preceded a second video, on the mindset of defenders in beach volleyball, which preceded a third, introducing to the world a YouTube channel dedicated to tutorials, teaching people how to play beach volleyball, all thanks to your favourite, goofy professors: Maddison and Riley McKibbin.

The channel exploded.

Their ninth video, explaining the arm swing mechanics to hit a volleyball, featuring Taylor Crabb, has drawn 1.3 million views and counting.

They were onto something.

As the channel grew, so, too, did the McKibbins’ opportunities both in and out of the sport. Everyone wanted the McKibbins at their event. Didn’t matter if it was the AVP or FIVB, a four-man tournament in Texas or the four-man World Championships in Doha. Didn’t matter if it was on the beach or snow. Maddison and Riley McKibbin were the hottest commodity in beach volleyball.

“We’re in the entertainment business,” Riley, 32, said in a previous interview. “A huge part of it is your performance but there’s another giant part of it too that focuses a lot on the media portion of it. The more exposure you give yourself can act in synergy with your performance on the beach or court or whatever it may be.”

From 2017-2019, their performances online and on the beach rose in sync. With Riley on the sidelines with an injury, Maddison won his first AVP tournament. They expanded the content of their channel, adding vlogs with behind the scenes nuggets. They won a gold medal in snow volleyball, emerging from the qualifier to do so. They added wildly popular documentary-style features on players. They took a fifth in an AVP in Chicago, a career-high for them as a team. They put on a four-man event pitting AVP and NBA players with and against one another, garnering nearly one million views. They won an event in the Maldives.

The success of their YouTube channel became inextricably linked with their success on the beach, each begetting opportunities for the other. Soon they were hopping from Hawaii to the Maldives to Thailand to Doha, playing, filming, discovering stories, sharing the finest shawarma in Qatar with Cherif Younousse on the hotel floor, talking Cherif’s astounding journey from Senegal to a bronze medal.

“These last two years?” Maddison said from Las Gaviotas, where he is getting married. “These last two years have been completely unexpected – completely, pleasantly unexpected.”

And now, the cherry on top of it all: Maddison’s wedding. With both of the brothers out this season due to injury, neither will have to worry about staying in shape for AVP Chicago next weekend. Maddison can finally, finally, focus on one thing, perhaps the most important event of his life: Marrying Chelsea Hayes.

They met, as one could have guessed, through beach volleyball. In 2016, Maddison twisted his knee playing football on the beach. He and Riley had recently signed their first sponsor, Sports Academy, which provided trainers.

Who better to rehab Maddison than a former Division I volleyball player who had her fair share of success on the beach as a professional?

“She would train me in a warehouse with minimal equipment, just her and I,” Maddison said. “Our whole relationship started as a friendship. We become friends. It wasn’t a romantic thing from the start, which is cool when you think about it. It made for the strongest relationship I’ve ever had. We started as friends.”

And, on Saturday, they’ll start again as husband and wife. They’ll be married before a beach volleyball crowd, one that includes Tri Bourne, Trevor and Taylor Crabb, Troy Field, Sheila Shaw, Brian Cook, Kelsey Robinson, and Josh Glazebrook, among others.

And then – imagine this – Maddison will get to relax, and Riley might even get to sleep. No tournament for which to prepare. No video over which to obsess. Just a day as a new husband, with his new wife.

“Things are starting to come together now in this hamster wheel of ‘We gotta do a video! We gotta practise! We gotta do all this stuff!’ rushing around,” Maddison said. “Now we can focus on video content and then focus on volleyball and come back in 2022 where we left off in 2019 if not better. Riley and I are taking a new approach at 2022. With an injury, it allows you to take a step back and address all of the miniscule imbalances and what you’re doing wrong. We’re looking at our 2022 that it starts now. It honestly feels that way. Watching Atlanta, it was: I miss this. I really, really do. We’re both going to a physical therapist. It’s nice to have a fresh start.”