DOHA, Qatar — It was an awfully unusual time for Kristen Nuss to, maybe for the primary documented time on a seaside volleyball courtroom, get lazy.
Nuss and Taryn Kloth had been main Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft, 19-17, within the second set of the Seaside Professional Tour Finals gold medal match after having already gained the primary. They had been two factors shy of turning into the primary repeat champions of the occasion since Germans Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst took gold in 2016 and 2017. And but, there was Nuss, digging a excessive line shot and, relatively than pop up and start her strategy for a transition swing as she has achieved tons of of instances this season, she simply form of laid there.
The earlier contact had been purely Nussian, an all-out dash to dig a Cannon excessive line. It was a dig solely few on this planet could make, and never solely did Nuss scoop the shot with an all-out dive, her chest and face clouded in a plume of sand, the ball landed instantly into the platform of Kloth, who had at that time been placing on a clinic in transition setting. She may put Nuss in a superb place to attain, to go up three match factors for the most important prize purse of the yr, one the place gold comes not solely with the title of Seaside Professional Tour Finals champions, however $150,000.
Properly, Kloth may put Nuss ready to attain, anyway, if Nuss would ever get her behind off the bottom.
As a substitute, she lay there on her again for a second, apparently having fun with the view, a quick respite in a season that has been a full-throttle dash since December. However then Nuss noticed one thing that galvanized her a bit: Kloth wasn’t lobbing the ball again over the web as she anticipated.
She was setting it.
Why would she do this?
Kloth was questioning the identical about Nuss: Why was she nonetheless on the bottom?
Nuss, see, thought Kloth had touched the excessive line shot, that means Kloth would have needed to ship the ball over to Cannon and Kraft. Nuss would then be in no explicit hurry to strategy and assault a ball. So when she noticed Kloth forming a platform and angling her physique to set, up popped Nuss, fast as a hiccup, and shortly her toes had been pitter-pattering into an strategy as solely hers can, leaping awkwardly off her left foot, seeing the slimmest risk to cut a minimize shot from properly off the web that may, ought to the universe smile down upon her simply so on Saturday in Doha, go down for a kill.
“It was going to be wonderful or an error,” Nuss mentioned afterward, laughing.
Oh, it was wonderful all proper, the shot of the match, not just for the comical issue and absurdity of it, but additionally the timing. That kill put the match out of attain. A 20-17 lead would show insurmountable, and Nuss and Kloth would shut it, on the next play, 21-19, 21-17.
An All-American Olympic Quad Ends in Gold
Saturday’s Finals marked the top of perhaps probably the most bittersweet Olympic quad the US has ever had. It supplied the ultimate exclamation level within the last chapter in what was an American tour de power from 2022-2024. Three straight seasons have ended with a Finals gold medal returning dwelling to the USA. For the primary time since 2009, the World Championship was additionally claimed by an American pair when Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes toppled Brazil’s Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa in Tlaxcala, Mexico.
Each main title, and most non-major ones, too are presently owned by the USA, save for one: an Olympic gold, or perhaps a medal in any respect.
Paris marked the primary time because the creation of seaside volleyball as an Olympic sport that an American crew didn’t medal. Nuss and Kloth, who entered because the odds-on favorites to problem Ana Patricia and Duda for gold, bowed out in ninth; Cheng and Hughes settled for fifth, the identical finishes, respectively, as Chase Budinger and Miles Evans and Andy Benesh and Miles Partain.
Some considered that lone match in Paris, with a novel format and a enjoying schedule not like some other, as an indictment of a federation gone awry. It’s a view that’s each unusual and myopic from an American perspective and likewise a summation of the chief downside with the game as an entire: Success, each as a pair and a federation and a whole sport, is measured by one match each 4 years.
However Nuss and Kloth’s victory in Doha, their second straight season-ending victory, is one more reminder that this quad, Olympic medal or not, has been probably the most profitable the USA has seen within the rally scoring period. Within the three years because the Tokyo Olympic Video games, the USA collected 15, 20, and 18 medals in Problem or Elite16 occasions, in addition to three victories on the Seaside Professional Tour Finals and one other on the World Championships. How profitable is that? Think about: With an additional yr from Rio to Tokyo, People mixed for 50 medals in three-stars or larger — three much less in amount, regardless of having an additional season to build up extra. High quality, too, was assured within the Paris quad. Title a serious title or a serious annual cease on the Seaside Professional Tour — Gstaad, Hamburg, Ostrava, Espinho, Vienna, Rio, World Champs, Seaside Professional Tour Finals — and an American has both medaled or gained at the very least as soon as.
The depth of the ladies has by no means been larger, as evidenced by Cannon and Kraft’s latest run of now-four consecutive medals on the high degree — silver in Gstaad in an all-American last with Nuss and Kloth, bronze in Vienna, silver in Rio de Janeiro, silver in Doha in one other all-American last — Molly Shaw and Toni Rodriguez’s full palette of medals in three consecutive Challenges in China, India, and the Philippines, and Kim Hildreth and Teegan Van Gunst beating out fellow People Deahna Kraft and Lexy Denaburg for bronze at an Elite16 in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, the place each started within the qualifier. The Futures degree, too, has change into a proving floor for American NCAA expertise. Look no additional than this weekend’s in Pompano Seaside, Florida, the place six of the eight semifinalists are American.
Put merely: America is as deep and formidable because it has ever been, and it’s straightforward to challenge it solely rising stronger.
It’s as foolish, then, to name this Olympic quad a failure as it’s to name Kristen Nuss lazy. Complicated at first, maybe, when all the data isn’t instantly obvious, however when a full accounting has been made, Nuss’ shot within the Finals is an apt personification for the way this quad went: America went for glory.
For 3 straight years in a superb Paris Olympic quad, it discovered loads of it.
