Seaside can put the “annual” back into the Seaside Beach Volleyball tournament, as the popular event made its return to the beach last weekend, after cancellation of the 2020 tournament because of the pandemic.

In its 39th year, the event is one of the largest beach volleyball gatherings on the West Coast.

Action on Saturday featured exciting championships in the men’s and women’s open/professional divisions.

The men’s open winners were Evan Cory, a 6-foot-3 left-hander from Metairie, Louisiana, and 6-foot-7 teammate Logan Webber, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The duo topped the team of Travis Mewhirter and Adam Roberts in the final.

Cory and Webber were coming off a recent championship in the AVPNext New Orleans tournament in Kenner, Louisiana.

Meanwhile, the women’s open title match went all three sets, with the California team of Megan Nash and Brittany Tiegs (Redondo Beach) rallying for a 17-21, 21-16, 15-12 victory over Emily Hartong and Macy Jerger.

Action officially began Thursday with the juniors division and wrapped up Sunday with play in the fours and sixes divisions.

This year, the 185 courts set up on the beach featured over a thousand teams, mostly from Washington, Oregon and California, with entrants from states including Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Montana, Texas and New York, among others.

In other division championships, No. 1 seed Danielle Jacobson and Callie Weber took the first set, 21-19, and won another close battle in the second set to secure the victory over the team of Allison and Brenna Meehan in the women’s AA championship match.

Jacobson and Weber, from the Seattle area, led 14-12 in the second set before the Meehans rallied to tie it at 14-14.

The match saw ties at 15, 16, 17 and 18, before Jacobson and Weber caught a wave of momentum and scored the final three points for a 21-18 win.

Weber will be a senior with the University of Washington beach volleyball team. Jacobson played collegiately at Central Washington University.

In the men’s AA north division, the team of David Aspidov and Vitaly Aspidov swept Team Enriques, 21-17, 21-19.

In the south division, No. 1 seed Colin Kim and Marshall Rooney lost the first set of the finals, but rallied to win in three sets over No. 10 seed Mark Bejan and Vitaly Martinov, 15-21, 21-15, 15-10.