AVPNext GOLD AC CHAMPIONS AGAIN

It was one year ago at this exact same tournament when Taryn and I started on this journey of playing AVP tournaments. A lot has changed since that first tournament a year ago… Taryn was actually breathing during our first game, we actually had some AVP points so we weren’t seeded super low, and Kloth was no longer a name that many did not know. However, there was one similarity… we were eager to compete against some of the best competition that we had seen thus far.

This tourney story starts as we depart our flight in Philadelphia (which Taryn thought was a state lol). This was our second stop of the trip (we had a connecting flight in Charlotte). We made our way to baggage claim and tried to figure out the train situation. Taryn and I are both not necessarily the best at navigation and direction but have no fear I figured it out. It was a quick kiosk purchase with a little help from some locals. As we waited for the train, Taryn brought up the fact that this is what we would have to be doing when we start competing internationally. We both kind of nervously looked at each other while that thought pondered in our heads for a couple seconds. An international train system, a language barrier, and the two of us just does not sound like a good combination.

We made it to our next stop, 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. We followed the crowd off the train hoping they would lead us to the right spot. They did. We then had to figure out how to purchase a ticket for the next train. After a couple wrong turns and misguided information we were able to stumble upon the Amtrak tickets that we needed. We had about a 30 minute wait in the station so Taryn went and got herself a nice Dunkin donuts coffee. She’s an avid coffee drinker; whereas, I’m still in the beginning stages of liking coffee. The coffee didn’t entice me, but the large pretzel stand in the middle of the station did. Taryn was so kind enough to stop and grab me a pretzel and cheese on her way back from Dunkin, so I indulged myself before boarding the train. Have to carb load before playing right?

Our next stop, AC Train Station. We again followed the herd and again it did not lead us astray. We carried our luggage up the stairs of the bus that would bring us to our final destination, the Tropicana Hotel. I would not say this was a smooth bus ride. Our driver would most definitely fall into the category of an aggressive driver. And by fall into the aggressive driver category, I mean he is the king of that category. By this point we had already almost run over 3 people but he was not done yet. We start making a turn but then come to an abrupt stop as we hear him yell in a not so friendly tone out the window, “MOVE! Walk faster!”. I make eye contact with a lady in the front of the bus and we both just bust out laughing. It was laughs of disbelief and shock that this man has now almost killed a handful of people. We stepped out of the bus thankfully unharmed and made our way to the Tropicana’s lobby. After 12 hours of traveling for the day, we made it to our room.

Our day was not done yet. We had to get down to the courts because our friends were playing in the qualifier and we had to get some touches in before playing the next day along with doing a little interview with Eric Richey from VSN (the broadcasting company from Louisiana that was streaming all of the matches for the weekend). We made the 15ish minute walk down to the courts where we arrived around 5:45pm. We watched and talked with our friends while getting in a little peppering session. We were just enjoying ourselves and waiting for our interview until it dawned on Taryn and I at about 6:20pm that we had made a 6:30 dinner reservation. Our calm and in no rush time shifted to us running to the restaurant to hopefully make it on time.

We did indeed make it and enjoyed a nice pre-tournament meal with Taryn’s newly engaged friends (and now my friends) from Creighton, Kenzie and Clark. They had made the drive in from NY to come support us for the weekend which they had also done the year prior. (You could say they are our AC AVP goodluck charms) We talked, laughed, reminisced, and fueled up for what would end up being a very grueling day of volleyball.

My parents were suppose to join us for dinner as well. Unlike us, they had a direct flight from New Orleans to Philadelphia; however, their flight departed hours after ours (we wanted to get to AC earlier which is why we chose the early flight). The entire week leading up to the tournament my mom had been bragging about her direct flight. She kept saying, “watch, we’re going to get to AC before y’all since y’all have a stop”. Boy did karma came back to get her… my parents did not arrive at the hotel until around 9:30pm (they were suppose to arrive at 6:30pm). The train from 30th Street Station to AC Train Station was apparently having technical difficulties. They boarded and de-boarded 3 different trains in addition to just sitting on one of the trains for about an hour not moving. Let’s just say Taryn and I were VERY happy with our decision to take the early flight.

As many of you know, one of the downfalls of playing beach volleyball is the money situation… you do not make much. So with that being said, you try to save money as much as possible and one way to do that is by sharing and splitting the room cost with your parents. I had known that my dad was a snorer which was my biggest concern when they talked about coming on the trip. I need silence in order to sleep. My mom on numerous occasions said that his snoring would not be a problem. She even went as far to say, “Your dad does not snore” which I knew was false but I figured it can’t be that bad. Well ladies and gentleman, he does indeed snore and it was indeed a problem. Pillows were thrown towards their bed, pillows were placed over our ears, my dad’s legs were shaken, Audrey, my mom, was woken up in a panic, and pretty much every tactic to make the noise stop was attempted. Honestly, I think the most impressive part of the tournament is the fact that we won while being a little sleep deprived.

With all that being said, I am very very grateful that my parents came. They did and always do so much for us. If any athlete is reading this, always thank your parents. I should listen to myself and do it more often. I’ll start now… Mom and Dad, thank you! You’re appreciated!

We woke up determined to win. We knew this tournament was going to be our toughest task yet. We suited up in our all black attire while repping our Louisiana Feed Your Soul hat/visor and made our way to the courts. About 3 minutes into the walk which was about 9:08am we both looked at each other and said, “it’s hot”. I think when you spend so much time (we have not been apart from each other for longer than a week this entire year) with one person your brains just start speaking to each other because this simultaneous thought thing happens to us A LOT. We basically have twin telepathy (I know it can be hard to even tell us apart sometimes).

Our first match was against Jendryk & Carnes. We had never played them before as a pair. One of the cool things about this sport is the community aspect and I think that shined bright in this instance. While doing our prematch rock-paper-scissors game, Taryn pointed out that she really liked one of our opponent’s Barbie pink nails which led us into learning that she is getting married in a month. She just had her bachelorette party hence the fancy nails. How fun! We congratulated her and then it came time to play. The first couple points of the weekend are always a little rough. It takes some time to knock off the long travel day and really get the body going, but we did just that and cruised to a 21-7 and 21-12 victory.

We came into the tournament ranked #14 which lined us up to play the #3 seed in Zana Muno & Chrissy Jones in the second match of the day. Like I’ve said before, this tournament was stacked so we knew the competition would be tough. We were waiting around for our game to start and Bracket Pal was not allowing us to put the scores in yet, Taryn walked over to the ref tent to input the scores. John King, head ref, asked “are you ready for center court yet?”, to which I responded “we will play whenever and wherever you want”. That officially moved us behind schedule to the main court within the tournament. The men’s game right before us went long so we had to warmup on the side and had about 7 minutes to be ready to play! We took a couple swings and hit a couple serves and we were off. We took set 1 in a side-out battle of 25-23. We made set 2 very interesting but in the end lost 27-25. It all came down to our third set. Kristen and I love to be pushed. We wanted this win and knew we could have it. Unfortunately, we did not limit our errors and it cost us the game. Two tournaments in a row, losing the second game. We knew we had to regroup and we definitely made our trail to the finals much more taxing. Not to be discouraged by the loss, we took the game, analyzed what went wrong and learned from the mistakes. The best and worst part about volleyball, everything starts over at zero.

After a tough match, especially a tough losing match, it is usually very difficult to bounce back. You have just completely drained your body and now you have to get yourself fired up again to do it again. I bet you can ask any athlete and they will all agree that it is a very tough task. Our tough task was Lindstrom & Gebhard. A crafty lefty and a powerful strong side. It was not our first encounter with them. We played them in the round of 16 in the New Orleans AVPNext earlier this summer. While rebounding after a loss if a tough task, we were up for the challenge. Whenever we suffer a loss, it definitely makes us better which I think is very cool. Some people may back down but a loss for Taryn and I lights a fire in us. We hate losing and we did not let it happen in this match going on to win 21-17 & 21-15.

Our fourth game of the day, it was a toasty one out there. The black sand torched the bottoms of our feet. We were now in a lose or go home situation. The pressure of that pushed us to excel past our tired bodies telling us to go sit down and relax. We were matched up against Katie Horton and Carly Kan (the people we played in the finals at AC last year). We always know it will be a battle with these two. Yet again, we had won the first & lost the second game. Onto a 3rd set, as if we needed more volleyball games out in the heat! We had to put aside any ache and play with determination and belief in our training. It was in the middle of the third and our opponent sadly went down and sought medical attention. Like we had said before, it was HOT. Her body was starting to say “no more volleyball” and cramped up. She pushed through and finished the game, however, we did come out victorious. This led us to our final match of the day, we had to win this to send us into the coveted “Championship Sunday” games.

After our loss in the second match of the day we knew we had set ourselves up for more volleyball than we would have liked. However, we are fighters and we want to win. We didn’t even discuss our fatigue. We went out there and focused on each point. We pushed for the first two sets to keep us from going to three sets. Katie Hogan and Brittney Tiegs were fighters too. They were at our court watching our previous match. We finished it in two and Taryn collapsed into the sand. We had made it through the day. Time to go grab some food! Dinner at 8pm after a long day of playing never tasted so good. Especially after our 20 minute walk back to the hotel.

After a night full of refueling, rehydration, treatment, and recovery we were ready. We thought it would be a great idea to wear red, white & blue to support Team USA. This time we walked outside and within 2 minutes of being out there we noticed the change of elements. The wind was unbelievable. It was gusty, swirling and we knew that it was going to be an interesting day of volleyball. Who could control the ball within the elements to bring success to the team. Our first game on Sunday was against LSU alum Katie Dickens and Jessica Gaffney. All four of us walked onto the court and tried to warmup and serve some balls. Most of them went into the net or out of bounds. Instead of don’t let the ball touch the ground, the game turned into who can keep the ball within the blue lines on the beach. The wind would swirl and swallow up the ball and push it many feet from where the intentional ball placement was. That’s a great factor that comes into play with the great sport of beach volleyball, you have to deal with any and all elements that are thrown your way. Control the ball! Kristen and I would make mistakes that typically would not have happened in the absence of the wind but we had to laugh about the craziness that was happening and find a way to make it work. After two sets of wind-ball we made it to the quarterfinals! If you had lost count, this was our 6th game of the weekend in about 24 hours.

We were moved to court number 2 for the second match of the windy day! Luckily it was further from the water which meant slightly less wind, please let me emphasize SLIGHTLY. There was still a lot of wind but we now had one game in it and played in the wind a bit better. We really tried to use it to our advantage when we were on the good side. Reeves and Hartong are well-known beach volleyballers who have played in the AVP and FIVB circuit quite a bit! It was quite the challenge that we had set up for us. We earned our way into the next round by winning 21-18 & 21-17.

Semis here we come! We matched up with the VanGunst twin sisters who played beach volleyball at Georgia State. We had run across them a couple times, and now in the semi-finals on center court. Luckily, center court did have some blockades which made this wind less of a factor. This made it more manageable, although whenever you would toss the sand up to check the direction of the wind it would change and swirl within minutes. We had to go out there and trust our game. For the eighth game in a row, we were about to start and Kristen had to go to the bathroom, hydration is no joke! We pulled it out in two sets and we were in… finals bound.

Delaney Mewhirter and Brooke Sweat. Two people who have played a ton of volleyball and at the highest level of volleyball. Sweat was a 2016 Olympian and just missed out on the 2020 Olympics. Safe to say, we were the underdogs in this matchup and we loved it. The first set was a full on battle. Back and forth it went. The wind, like it had been all day, was an issue with a strong good side and bad side. We knew we had to capitalize on the good side and do our best to manage the bad. We would earn some points and then they would earn them back or vice versa. The game went extra and down the stretch we made some costly mistakes. We had the opportunities to win it but just could not put it away. Again, we had to show our fight and bounce back from a loss. We were determined. The second set was another back and forth dual. This time, we capitalized on those opportunities down the stretch and brought the match to a 3rd and deciding set. A switch was flipped for Taryn and myself. We were not going to lose. It was our 21st set in 30 hours and we were playing our best volleyball. A huge shoutout to our coach Drew Hamilton for training us to be able to compete at a high level throughout the entire weekend. We were making plays left and right and you could just tell this set was ours. Ours it was with a 15-7 victory we had done it… won our 3rd consecutive AVPNext Gold tournament. This one even sweeter than the last one. Let the celebration begin!

By: Taryn Kloth & Kristen Nuss