Keenan’s getting there

MANHATTAN BEACH — Brad Keenan has seen the progress this year with partner Nick Lucena

For Keenan, the ex-Fountain Valley High standout, it has been a struggle at times. And he undoubtedly would have liked to have done even better last weekend at the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals Manhattan Beach Open, considered the “granddaddy” of the tour.

Keenan and Lucena settled for third after losing a marathon semifinal match to eventual champions Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal, 21-16, 14-21, 13-15. They split $10,200.

“Finally,” Keenan said Saturday after advancing to the semifinals, happy with the progress the partnership has made. The third-place finish tied a season-best on tour.

“I don’t think I’ve had a finish better than ninth [at Manhattan Beach],” he said.

“It’s taken half a season but I feel like we’re finally getting there.”

Keenan was the only local to make it to Sunday. Other teams fell late Saturday, including the Huntington Beach sister team of Katie and Tracy Lindquist, seeded eighth on the women’s side in the record 64-team main draw.

They tied for seventh, splitting $5,280.

The Lindquist sisters won their first three matches before falling to top-seeded eventual champions Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs.

In the contender’s bracket, they won a match before being upended by Priscilla Lima and Tatiana Minello, 21-15, 22-20.

The tour veterans have finished somewhere in fifth through ninth place in all nine tournaments so far this year, but the majority of those have been ninth-place finishes.

“We’ve been playing OK but we definitely have higher expectations for ourselves,” Katie Lindquist said. “I think we still have some consistency to work on right now. We’ve gotten all top-10 finishes this season, and I’m happy with that, but some of the matches we’ve lost we should have won. That’s a little frustrating.

“Ninth every once in a while would be fine, but we expect a few more fifths and sevenths and even a couple of thirds. We’ve been content with the season, but we know we can do a little better.”

Huntington Beach’s Ed Ratledge, another Fountain Valley High product, had a roller-coaster day with partner Ryan Mariano. The No. 13-seeds ended up finishing tied for seventh.

Ratledge was cramping up in his right leg during a winner’s bracket match against Matt Olson and Kevin Wong. After splitting the first two games, Ratledge was forced to stop early in the third.

From there, he said he tried what he called a “wives’ tale” on the AVP Tour — pickle juice — to relieve the cramping.

“Everybody seems to believe it,” Ratledge said. “It’s the first time I tried it. It doesn’t taste good.”

Ratledge and Mariano then won against No. 10 Pedro Brazao and Matt Prosser on stadium court, before being bounced by top-seeded Sean Scott and John Hyden, 21-14, 21-16.

“We had a slump for two tournaments,” Ratledge said of his partnership with Mariano. “It takes a little while to build inertia. I feel like we’re playing as good volleyball as we’ve played, but it just takes time to build inertia from ‘We’re playing crappier and crappier’ to ‘We’re playing better and better.’ ”

Huntington Beach’s Jeff Carlucci and partner Adam Roberts finished tied for 17th. On the women’s side, H.B. resident Saralyn Smith and partner Beth Van Fleet finished tied for ninth.

The next AVP Tour stop, at Hermosa Beach, begins Aug. 6.