PARIS — US duo Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss impressed in their women’s beach volleyball opener, defeating Canada’s Heather Bansley and Sophie Bukovec in straight sets as the Eiffel Tower looked on in Paris.
A South Dakota native, Kloth had never even played beach volleyball until after she graduated from Creighton as a star in the indoor version of the sport.
“I actually got dismantled. I was horrible. I couldn´t even talk and walk in the sand at the same time,” she said according to AP. “I just remember going home and calling my parents and I´m like: `Oh, my gosh. They should probably kick me off the team.´”
Unlike the generations of Californians who grew up playing volleyball on the local beaches as kids, Kloth and teammate Kristen Nuss came to the sandy side of the sport late. After teaming up, they stayed in Louisiana, training in Nuss´ hometown of New Orleans.
And when the world’s second-ranked team made its debut with a 21-17, 21-14 victory over Canada at Eiffel Tower Stadium in Paris, it was the first American beach volleyball pair ever to go for Olympic gold without any connection to the Golden State.
“We kind of said we wanted to rewrite the script, and kind of change that,” Nuss said in a recent phone interview before the pair departed for Paris.
“You had to move out to California. You had to live in California to make it into something in this sport. And I feel like we really done a good job of kind of changing that.”
Beach volleyball was made for – and made in – California, with its miles of sandy shoreline and weather that allows athletes to play year-round.
The two-person game was invented there, and it has thrived on beaches where volleyball nets welcome professionals and recreational players alike. The Volleyball Walk of Fame on the Manhattan Beach Pier commemorates the winners of the annual tournament there – one of the sport´s most prestigious.
And since the NCAA first sanctioned beach volleyball in 2016, California schools – UCLA and Southern California, to be precise – have won every national championship.
“When people say California is the hotbed of the sport, it really is,” Nuss said. “People grow up going to the beach, playing the sport. People love it there.
“Louisiana was definitely not the hotbed of beach volleyball when I was growing up,” said Nuss, who started playing beach volleyball as a sophomore in high school. “We would almost have to beg other junior teams to play in tournaments, so we could just have a juniors tournament.”
Kloth played indoor volleyball at Creighton in Omaha, Nebraska – another distinctively nonbeach town – and arrived at LSU ready to, and needing to, learn. Her only experience with the beach game was hitting the ball around with friends at a lake back in South Dakota.
“I wouldn´t even call it a beach. I would call it dirt,” she said. “It was like concrete with a little bit of dust on the top of it, and we would just play indoor volleyball outside.”
(Beach volleyball is a totally different sport than the indoor game, with two players on a team instead of six. But the biggest change is going from the hardwood to the flexible surface, which makes running and jumping – any sudden movement, really – a new challenge.)
