Baxter who won with partner, Randy Steele in last year’s Men Championship, defeating Daisuke Matsumoto and Shigekazu Fujimatsu will make his sixth visit to the CNMI.
A professional player of Federation Internationale de Volleyball, Baxter will meet Olympic gold medalist Phil Dalhausser who is also expected to participate in the Marianas Cup.
In 2004, the Baxter and Steele tandem also took top honors. The 37 year old, 6’5” Minnesota native started his volleyball career at the junior level for Team Sota of Minnesota. He continued at Ball State University and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Corporate Financial Management where his team finished third at the 1994 NCAA Tournament.
Baxter advanced to the five final fours on the AVP Tour from 2003 to 2005 with four different partners. During that span, no other player had made it to the semifinals with as many different partners. In 2005, he ranked eighth in both digs (629) and kills (1,152).
“Bax” credits Karch Kiraly as his inspiration to pursue the professional beach game. The athletes he most looks up to are Kevin Garnett and Deion Sanders. If he weren’t playing volleyball he would “probably be grinding it out on one of the Professional Golf Tours, hopefully it would be the PGA Tour.”
The 17th Marianas Cup Beach Volleyball Festival scheduled for March 6 to 8 at the PIC Volleyball Courts will include a Kids’ Clinic run by the pros on March 5 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and the Kids’ Marianas Cup on March 14.
The highly anticipated Exhibition Match among the US, Japan and Korean professionals is open to the public and will be held at PIC’s beach volleyball courts on Friday, 6 March 2009 starting at approximately 5pm.
