OUR 1ST ELITE 16

On Saturday, May 28, day #2 of the New Orleans AVP tournament Kristen received an Instagram DM from a Norwegian player that was also on the reserve list for Latvia. She had asked if we would be accepting our slot in the qualification tournament that was scheduled to start on June 1st in Jūrmala. I am detailing the times and dates to show you how flexible we must be in order to make these trips happen.

We are both very Type A people, so we were constantly checking the reserve list for Jūrmala to make sure that we were still number 10 on the reserve list, we were only 5 days out from the tournament starting, we thought “there is no way 10 teams will pull out of an Elite 16 that late and take the fine that comes along with it”, well we were wrong! We are still currently listed as #10 on the reserve list, but we are also listed #14 on the qualification list too. We found out that it doesn’t update the reserve list!

In a burst of excitement, panic, screaming, and thinking what in the world is going on – we had to make a decision. We had planned on taking this week off and I would head up to South Dakota to see my family that I haven’t seen since Christmas and relax. No volleyball, no competition just some free time to clear our brains and heal our bodies before we head into a busy next couple of months. We should just know that as soon as we schedule something like that, plans will change. I have scheduled and cancelled my flight home three times now! It got to the point where I decided to come home, told my mom I booked my flight, she responded “we both know this means I will not be seeing you at home”. As excited as we were for the Elite 16, we were excited for some time off. I was going to be at the pool and lounging around, going to my younger sibling’s yoga classes, basketball games, and having family dinners. Now, I am in the midst of another 17+ hour travel day. On the flip side, how could we not be so thankful that we were to be given an opportunity to compete in an Elite 16 tournament, especially this early in our professional and international careers. So, when we don’t know what to do, we call the other half of our amazing team, Drew and Mary Hamilton.

Mary and Drew were overwhelmingly excited for us. Drew, although he didn’t change the inflection in his voice, he was ecstatic for us! Very shortly after the excitement, the composed human he is, asked us if we wanted to go or if we wanted to take the break. Kristen and I were in the middle of a tournament, fighting jet lag, and completely shocked that the other team messaged us and told us we were in. We had to remove ourselves from the craziness of the last 15 minutes and go on a walk and talk through it. We came back into the house and looked at the calendar – we were able to push our break one week back. We booked our flights to Latvia for Monday morning on Saturday afternoon around 4 pm. Did we book the flight before we knew where it was on a map? Maybe…

Our mindset had to switch back to the present tournament, and we have a game at 8:35 pm in the New Orleans AVP. This game would put us through to the semis if we were to win! After we finished that game in a horrific way – all thoughts, prayers, and love go to Toni - Neither of us got much sleep after her game ending injury. Injuries are painful and we were reminded that anything can happen when we step on the court. We were very grateful and reflected on the past couple months and how blessed we were. Let the packing commence!

Monday morning came quick, we threw the rest of our stuff in our suitcases, moved all of our appointments & meetings, and we were off to the New Orleans airport. To no surprise we were delayed in New Orleans for a nice, tight connection through Atlanta. Our flight over to Atlanta might have been one of the most turbulent flights – don’t worry Kristen’s white knuckled hands made it through the bumps even though I thought she was going to break the arm rest with her death grip. Meanwhile, I was enjoying the rollercoaster like feeling of when my stomach drops and having a blast!

We landed in Atlanta, and I got a notification that boarding had already begun, needless to say we scurried through the airport to find our gate with the agent saying “boarding all passengers and all zones”. We made it and eight short hours later we landed in Amsterdam, where we were only one stop away from Riga, Latvia! We tried to catch a nap in Amsterdam but that did not go well (pls check the pic). We also tried to catch a nap on the flight but sadly neither of us slept a wink.

Kristen and I traveled all the way from New Orleans to Riga with Besti Flint – she met up with Kelly in Lativa and luckily, we were all able to get a shuttle to the hotel together! It’s so strange as we are all Team USA, but we have to compete against each other constantly. I mean they just beat us one day before and now we are all riding to Jūrmala together. We rolled up to the hotel and the location looked beautiful. The weather on the other hand was cold and rainy. Check in was a breeze and first thing on the agenda – a shower. After an 18-hour travel day we have greasy hair, angry tummies, and fuzzy teeth that can’t wait to be brushed.

On our shuttle ride to the hotel, we noticed a line of cute restaurants and a grocery store within walking distance – this has been a major key for us. When we show up to a new location, we have to find a place with an endless supply of water! We napped, checked in only to find that they did not have credentials ready for us.. why? Because they themselves found out just like us a short 72 hours ago that we were now in the tournament, and they were not prepared for the “reserve listers” to come through.

We ventured out to the courts only to find a pink building covered in butterflies (you’ll see the pics at the end). We can’t make this up, we are very grateful for the continuous reminder that we are not on this journey alone. Then we made our way through the most populated street to find a place to eat and we were back at the hotel to recover and sleep before our 9:50 am game!

I’m pretty sure the sun never goes down here – we were trying to sleep at 9 pm and it was still bright outside. Kristen looked it up and sunset was set for 10:05pm and the sun rises at 4 am!

As this is our first Elite 16, it’s the little things that we notice. For starters, the hotel was right next to the venue, the tournament directors were on top of the schedule, and we have a picture and our name on the credentials. However, we tried to pick up our credentials 3 different times but they were still not made with all of the reserve teams sneaking their way into the qualifier. We were told to just get them in the morning before our game. We showed up at center court and we had to convince security that we were the athletes that were playing in 10 minutes, and we needed to get in. Then an FIVB manager came over to tell us that we had to leave and go get our credentials. We were only given 10 minutes of warmup time of which we needed to get moving as we landed in Latvia less than 24 hours ago. We convinced her that we needed to stay in the stadium and that we would go get our credentials right after the match was over. She said, “if you don’t get your credentials, they won’t let you back in” to which we replied, “great, we don’t need to get back in right now, we have to go play a game.” As the announcer was welcoming the teams to the court, we found out how to correctly pronounce Jūrmala – the J is silent for all of those people that are unaware of the small beach town located in Latvia.

We got moving right away and won our first match on stadium court against the home Lativan team. Next up, a Mexican duo and the winner will stamp their ticket to the Main Draw of the Jūrmala Elite 16. We went to the warmup courts and Kristen, who is NOT a fan of cold weather is shivering and announced that she was cold at least 10 times in our 3-minute walk to the court so I gave her my jacket, of which she was drowning in! As we begin to warmup the wind picks up and it starts to rain, as we were about to head to the court to play the men’s game before ours goes to the third set. So, we sit around in the rain even longer and finally we get to step on the court to try and qualify for our first Elite 16 Main Draw. The weather pretty much sums up the entire feel. Yucky. It was wet, cold, and windy but we pulled out a victory and we were in! Qualifying means a lot of things, at the top of the list: more points, free meals, and a free hotel room as long as you keep winning!

Now this hotel is completely worth it! It is called the Baltic Beach Resort and Spa and we had access to the pool, saunas, and workout facilities. We took advantage of the robes and slippers that we were given to wear on the daily! After a long day and a shower, it’s nice to just have a long, white robe to wrap up in!

Day 1 of Pool Play: we were warming up for our first pool play match and some man from Latvia came up to Kristen and asked if she was Sarah Sponcil. To which Kristen responds “no” and shows him her credential with her name on it and he says with an uninterested tone, “I don’t know you” and walks away without an ounce of respect for her name. This man will now know the name of Kristen Nuss.

For all our butterfly story lovers, we were on the lookout for our butterflies before the first match, then what do you know, the players that were leaving the bench we were given grabs her BUTTERFLY volleyball bag and walks off the court. I see it and immediately ask Kristen, “is that bag seriously covered in butterflies?”, indeed it was! Who has a butterfly volleyball bag? We got our first win against Brazil in the cutthroat pool play matches of the Elite 16 and we were on the board 1-0. We had one more pool play match for the day, but it was time for some lunch.

You know when you show up to an event or a new school and know no one? When you just feel like an outsider, and everyone is probably thinking “who the heck are these people”. Well, that’s exactly what we felt like in the tent at the player’s lunch. We have just been watching all these players either in the Olympics or on the VBTV App. Now we see them in person, I will let you know, they are taller than they look, and I absolutely love feeling like an average height human, maybe even short sometimes! Kristen’s head is at elbow height for most of the men’s teams for a nice little visual.

As we were waiting around for our next match and laying with our feet up on the bed headboards, I was scrolling through my Instagram explore page – what pops up? A plain cookie that was about to be decorated, of course it caught my attention, A BUTTERFLY cookie. Of course, I sent it to Kristen, and we received our next butterfly moment. That’s all we needed! We were reminded once again that we were blessed to be here and although we were going up against the Swiss Bronze medalists in the Tokyo Olympics, we had each other and that was enough! In an all-out battle (27-25 in the first set) against the Swiss we ended the first day of pool play 2-0! However, we were informed that you could still not make it out of pool play with a 2-0 start, of which we loved to hear. That’s an even better incentive to seal the deal and move onto quarters without calculating how many points or sets you need to win or lose to move onto Saturday.

After the game we were asked to do an interview for a Beach Volleyball series. The men that we worked with were very kind and brought up some great questions. All of which you will have to wait and see what we answered because we had to do this interview separately. Not to mention the interview started at 7:45 and went to 9 pm. Dinner for the athletes opened at 8:30 PM. We were so hungry; dare I say hangry and ready to eat. When we showed up at 9:05 the serving trays were all being taken away, so we swiftly hit the last three dishes that were still out and we were off to bed. We have a morning rematch against Cheng/Flint – whom we lost to in the finals of the AVP NOLA about 5 days ago in case you missed it.

Morning rolls around, and by morning, I mean 8:00 am even though the sun rises at 4:00 am and sets at 10:00 pm there is very little darkness. This is not great for me considering a crack in the blinds and the light shining through immediately wakes me up! At breakfast Kristen is trying her very best to start liking the taste of coffee. An immaculate latte comes out in front of her, she tries it and strikes out for the hundredth time – Kristen’s coffee chronicles coming soon.

Day 2 of pool play – following the rematch with Cheng and Flint, a group of young Lativan volleyball players came to get our jerseys and pictures. As we were leaving the court, two of the amazing ball girls came up to chat about volleyball, they were so sweet and we truly appreciate their hard work out there running around and standing in the cold wind during our matches. Then a man came up with a printed screenshot of our faces from a YouTube interview that we did 2 years ago for us to sign. Finally, you remember that man that didn’t know who Kristen was 24 hours ago? He came up to say, “I didn’t know who you were, but I do now”.

On our walk back to the hotel I was so excited to have the rest of the day off so we could go check out the pool and spa for some recovery! I have only been talking about this pool since we arrived at the hotel! I love water, boating, swimming – I wish I would have been a swimmer somedays. When we got back to the hotel room Kristen collapsed to the ground. It was her turn to shower first (yes, we take turns and keep it even on who has to wait in their sweat and sand and who gets to shower first). Absolutely exhausted, she laid down and couldn’t move from the hotel floor. Yet tomorrow she will get up and act like her legs aren’t weights, her shoulder is fresh, and her mind sharp as a knife.

Traveling and competing these last two months has been exhilarating and exhausting all mixed up. Our bodies and minds are telling us to stop, and we are pushing that aside to focus on winning one more point, one more set, or one more match.

We were asked to do another film session with the crew to put together a series to promote the growth of beach volleyball. After several takes, I think we both were able to get a couple good shots for them to use in the promo and we were off to the pool. It was very relaxing and beautiful and peaceful within the spa area. For dinner we walked over to our new favorite restaurant for the fourth time in four days. We have sat at the same table, we have seen the same waiter who seems to be unimpressed with our decision to eat the same exact meal, yet we return! On our walk back to the hotel we could wish our fellow American men’s team goodluck before there 10 pm match that we will be watching from bed with our eyes half closed. Thank you tournament director for the early games!

Saturday morning – quarterfinals against a veteran Brazilian team and we are on center court! We head down for breakfast and the coffee chronicles with Kristen continue. She orders a latte and proceeds with the following comments:

“Man, I feel cute drinking this”
Adds a sugar packet – makes a face – and adds more sugar then slides the latte away from her.
“Maybe it gets better as it gets colder”
“It’s tolerable but not great, (takes another sip) – “yeah not great”

While we were at breakfast, we noticed that a lot of the teams didn’t go to breakfast together. Then some of them would sit at separate tables. Do we spend too much time together? We literally do everything together in tournament times. There are so many interesting dynamics with each of the teams. Also, beach volleyball players are so deceiving in their appearance. I am so used to seeing all of these players in hats, glasses, and a uniform – when you take all of that away people look significantly different!

We were contacted by the film crew about our film session strategy. We honestly don’t spend a ton of time watching film. We have a game plan going in, but so many factors effect beach volleyball that it’s impossible to go in with one plan and expect it to go unchanged. While they were filming our warm up they were shocked to see that we use the same airpods. We listen to the same pump up music before the game, we created the playlist together. We split a protein bar. We split a banana. To us, all of that is so normal, to everyone else, we are so strange!

We walked into center court with our opponents of Barbara and Carol on the other side. We pushed the game to 3 sets and ended up losing 12-15. We had Latvian fans cheering and chanting for us. Screaming “USA” or “come on USA show them what you got”. Win or lose it was still a very cool atmosphere. We finished 5th. Losing sucks. Losing sucks so much when you care so much, you want to do better, you want your body to keep pushing and it just pushes you back. We took the loss, together, as we do everything. There wasn’t a single moment that I would have wanted to battle with anyone else.

As we were leaving the stadium with our heads down, four ball girls came running over with giant smiles. They were very complimentary on our volleyball skills and appreciated the time that we spent with them between games. They were so sweet, their English was fantastic, and we were so impressed. They turned my fiery, red anger into appreciation. They were so excited to be there. We were so excited to make it into an Elite 16! It’s not about the volleyball at this point, it’s about the impressions and the platform that beach volleyball gives us. We want to be good role models for these girls. We want to show kindness and gratitude for the experiences that we didn’t dream would happen this early in our careers!

We are proud, frustrated, ready for a break (physically & mentally), ready to unpack, and recover. We will take some time to unwind. Then, its go time!

What’s next? A nice long shower and after that we have to stop torturing ourselves with the plays within the last game that we want to take back. The dumb decisions, mistakes that we know we should not have made but did in the moment. We talked it out, learned, and moved on. We need to be like Goldfish for all of the Ted Lasso fans!

The Latvian fans had a spread of clothes, food, drinks, and games outside stadium court. We took a stroll through these pop-up shops. Three women came running up to us and with a beautiful accent expressed that they are now our fans and can’t wait to watch us and follow our careers. That is it. Those are the moments that make every single workout, training day, sleepless travel day worth it!

While we were wandering around, I spotted a little stand that happened to be a mother/daughter store that they created together and made these clothes. I was sold! After Kristen tried on multiple items (because everything fits her or is too long – while I have the opposite problem that everything is 8 inches too short) we settled on what we wanted and continue through the village of shops. We were lured in with the free sample of something that I couldn’t read and tried a traditional Latvian rhubarb cake. It was DELICIOUS.

We were asked to complete a final interview after decompressing from the game. It was so strange to be followed around by four different people, mic’d up, and having to answer some tough questions. As we were chatting and wandering through the quaint Jūrmala town square we would both catch ourselves stopping in the street to read the signs, only to realize we can’t read a single word on the sign. There are birds flying around everywhere! They would swoop so close to our heads and Kristen would freak out each time one would get within 10 feet of her! A few steps ahead of us there would be kids throwing food to the birds and playing with them.

All week there were butterfly posters that were plastered around the Jūrmala town square. Well, we couldn’t read what they said. But, we found out that there was an entire butterfly exhibit happening this weekend. We found it on our last block in our excursion. What are the chances? Apparently, this year, very high!

A couple months ago, you wouldn’t catch me talking to anyone after a big loss. I never would have agreed to do an interview. Again, I’m just trying to realize the growth that each tournament brings to us. We came back to our room, packed up, and we were ready to head to Riga to explore all day Sunday and fly out Monday morning!

I woke up Saturday night in a panic, I was literally playing a beach volleyball game in my dreams. I was reliving all those points I wanted back. I woke up with anxiety that I had just lost the match all over again. Interestingly, right before bed Kristen said, “this is the first time we get to go to bed without thinking about the next time we play”. I don’t think we have realized the toll that competing takes on us. We get to go to breakfast and enjoy the view and the meal, not having to make sure we have enough carbs or protein to last through a game or two.

Kristen’s coffee chronicles – the final day:

Proceeds to order a latte, again
“Maybe if I keep trucking I will like it” (I am not even sure what that means)
Stirs in a packet of sugar saying, “today is the day!” *sips coffee* “Nope, today is not the day”
“At least this glass is cooler, you should get a picture of me”
Takes a sip & says “deliciouso” *I give her a weird look* “What? I am working on my other languages”

Someone needs to get this girl some help.

Due to Kristen’s lack of love in her coffee tasting she had to find caffeine elsewhere. She asked the waitress for a Coke Zero, and after a bit of discussion the waitress seemed to understand. Kristen looked at me and said, “I don’t think she understood that.” Kristen was right, the waitress promptly returned with two pieces of gluten free cake/bread. Enjoy your Coke zero – that happens to be cake (it was actually very good cake/bread – we still don’t know) Then, as we were about to leave breakfast, Kristen went to try all of the items that she had been eyeing all week but didn’t put on her plate while we were playing. After one bite and her expressing how good it was, a waiter comes over to take the plate and Kristen immediately says, “you can leave that”, to which he proceeds to smile and collect the plate. I love the language barrier, although it can be frustrating yet so entertaining.

Although we would both much rather be playing on Sunday, we are going to take the time to explore Riga, Latvia. Who knows if we will ever venture back here. We started off at one of the largest European markets. It was massive and had everything from cherries, fresh meat, and bread to shoes, raincoats, and jumpsuits. It was extraordinary! There were four buildings full of vendors and outside there were flower and fruit vendors for as far as you could see. While we were weaving in and out of the buildings we cold smell the baskets of strawberries! The first building was filled with raw meat and countless customers, then clothes, then we found the good stuff. The Latvian foods, breads, and desserts! The fourth and final building was full of fish, I think I made record time sprinting through that building!

We explored Old Town and celebrated one whole year of competing professionally over a glass of wine and a pizza. Monday morning rolls around quickly and for the first time we will be flying back separately. I am going to the great state of South Dakota and Kristen is headed back to Louisiana!

Side Note: It’s been one year since we began our professional careers together on June 5th. We won our first AVP event on June 6. Since then so much growth, conversations, discussions, strategy, practice, struggles, excitement – there is still no one else I would rather go through all of this with! How do you put one year into words? Impossible. Thank you, Kristen and the team behind the scenes that supports us through the wins and loses! To the crazy people at home that would set their alarms for 2, 3, 4 am. Thank you! We think you guys are nuts but appreciate the support more than you will ever know! You will be happy to know that you will have a month off of early morning games with us.

June 5, 2021:

First professional AVP together in New Orleans
- AVP Next and we won

International travel places:
- NONE

International points:
- We all know the answer to this – ZERO points

AVP travel:
- Never been to an AVP Gold series event

AVP points:
- Qualifier team

June 5, 2022:

We are exploring Riga, Latvia after a 5th place finish in an Elite 16
International travel places:
- Coolangatta, Australia
- Itapema, Brazil
- Kusadasi, Turkey
- Jūrmala, Latvia
International points:
- Combined 2,020 points

AVP travel
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Waupaca, Wisconsin
- Atlantic City, New Jersey
- AVP Atlanta Gold Series
- AVP Manhattan Beach Gold Series
- AVP Chicago Gold Series
- Clearwater, Florida
- AVP Austin
- AVP New Orleans