Books
Travis Mewhirter is the author of five books, which you can find below and purchase on Amazon!
Kings of Summer, by Travis Mewhirter
It started with a kiss. In 1955, that’s what the best beach volleyball players in the world played for: A kiss from Hollywood star Greta Thyssen. It was a seminal moment for the sport, and the subculture that it soon birthed: Players could ditch the 9-5 work life and instead spend their days on the beach, working odd jobs to make ends meet, doing whatever it took to stay on the sand. By 1980, the winners had much more at stake, much more to reach for. Money. By 1990, the top players were making a fortune in winnings, into the millions. In 1996, beach volleyball charged onto the ultimate sporting stage: The Atlanta Olympic Games.
It seemed to be an unstoppable rise, a rapid and smooth ascent from lifestyle sport to a mainstream professional sport. It was anything but. Beach volleyball was a sport built by a rebel culture that had no intention of being tamed. It was volatile, mercurial, a sport run by testosterone-fueled men with an existence that embodied the California lifestyle: Sun, sex, drugs, alcohol, and money. The permanent vacation. Some wanted to keep the sport in America, keep the good times rolling, all to themselves. Others wanted to expand, make it global, push for the biggest spotlight in sport: The Summer Olympics. What resulted was a fraught, tension-filled push for beach volleyball to become an Olympic sport. The best two players in the world, Karch Kiraly and Sinjin Smith, former partners and best friends, ultimately became the sport’s biggest rivals. The result was the match of the century, at a sold-out Olympic stadium, an Olympic Medal Ceremony that saw Americans take gold and silver.
The sport of beach volleyball would never be the same.
As told by Kent Steffes, the most dominant player in the history of the game, and Travis Mewhirter, a professional player and the leading authentic voice in beach volleyball, Kings of Summer paints an unforgettable portrait of beach volleyball’s golden era, a chronicle of the sport’s venerated past written through the lens of its most extraordinary match.
Buy Kings of Summer on Amazon!
Volleyball for Milkshakes, by Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter
Tri had anxiously been waiting for this day throughout the entire school year: The beginning of summer, when his days would be filled with beach volleyball, surfing, and more beach volleyball. But when he signs up for summer beach volleyball at Outrigger Beach with his best friend and partner, Trevor, he discovers the devastating news that Trevor had teamed up with his arch rival, Ricardo.Now Tri, with the help of his tough love Auntie, must befriend a misfit named Travis, building a new team, a new partnership, and a deep friendship that changes his view on beach volleyball, and life.In this first-of-its kind novel, SANDCAST podcast hosts and professional beach volleyball players Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter take you through a fictional tale that will inspire, humor, and teach lessons that will last a lifetime.
Buy Volleyball for Milkshakes on Amazon!
We Were Kings, By Travis Mewhirter
We see them every four years, these sun-kissed, muscle-bound athletes, shirtless or bikini-clad. How glamorous it must be, to live the life of a professional beach volleyball player, for your office to reside west of the Pacific Coast Highway. Kings of the beach, they were called once, these professional beach volleyball players. And indeed, they lived up to the name – sponsors! Endorsements! Commercials! Millions in prize money. Icons to a rebel culture.
Yet when the Summer Olympics come to a close, beach volleyball disappears from the public eye, and what the rest of the world fails to see once again becomes reality: It is a remarkable struggle, a wondrous grind, to live the life of a professional beach volleyball player. It is cramming six to a one-bedroom apartment, of sleeping under piers before tournaments, of stealing sandwiches from the players’ tent to save an extra buck. It is the pressure of winning a tournament just to make rent or, for that matter, just to afford the next meal. It is flying to a tournament in Shanghai, not knowing if you’ll be able to feed your wife and newborn when you return, all in the hopes of keeping the beach dream alive.
Featuring interviews and arresting accounts of more than 100 beach volleyball players, award-winning writer and professional beach volleyball player Travis Mewhirter tells the stories, for the first time, of the modern player, lifting the curtain for the inside story of life as a professional beach volleyball player and the pursuit of being a king of the beach once more.
The Last 18, by Travis Mewhirter
The Last 18 is a story of a mother and her two sons, and the bonds between a family that cannot be broken, no matter the ailment. It explores the question: What would you do if you had two months left with a loved one? Do you make their final days comfortable, normal, routine? Act like nothing was different or wrong, like so many request? Or do you attempt the fantastic, the amazing, the miraculous? When Janis Lammey’s two youngest sons—Jay and Brian—are still in high school, she is diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s a late diagnosis. In two months, Janis Lammey is going to die. She will never see her sons graduate from college, she will not cry at their weddings, she will not cradle her grandchildren. But there is one thing that she can still do, and that’s watch her boys play golf. Jay and Brian have a freakish knack for the game. College prospects are on the horizon. It’s only a matter of time before the Tour comes calling. But time is no longer a luxury they have. They set out to do what their mother had wanted to see ever since they first picked up a club: play professional golf. With the help of a college coach, the boys receive an exemption into a tournament where their mother’s dream of seeing them play on Tour can be realized. And so they play, with their mother close-by, the last 18 holes of golf she will ever see.
More Than a Game, by Travis Mewhirter
Basketball and life are one of the same in the hoops-mad town of Gaithersburg. And for good reason. The Covenant Prep girls team is one of the best in the state, led by the mighty Lyla Storm, who may be the best player in the country. She has the college offers and records to prove it. The boys, too, are championship-caliber, having finished second in the state just a year ago while returning the majority of their top players. Both could realistically win the title.
And then, quick as a hiccup, devastating as an Earthquake, the town’s world comes crashing down. Prep’s legendary basketball coach, Bill Stottlemyer, passes away, leaving his son, Kevin, the team’s star point guard, wondering if it’s really all worth it, playing this game. He couldn’t play, not without Coach.
The community is shaken – and then shaken again, when Tara French, a player on the girl’s team, is hit by a car, leaving Lyla, her best friend, wondering, too, if it’s really all worth it. She couldn’t play, not without Tara.
The town couldn’t disagree. How could they ask its two young stars to play a game in the wake of such tragedy? But they needed something, anything, to provide an escape from the specters that hung over Gaithersburg. Basketball became their collective source of refuge. So play they did, in a season that became less about the wins and losses, points and box scores, and more about life, and how sports can so often help us get through it.
And the simple sport of basketball became far more than a game.