THE COVETED GOLDEN COWBELL - GSTAAD E16
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Yes, we really do have beaches in Michigan!
As we were doing an interview after our quarterfinal battle (battle is an understatement – we were dead) with Stam/Schoon, we were reminded that this was our first 3 peat tournament. The lovely lady also reminded us that our first time in Gstaad in 2022 we placed 5th, then in 2023 we placed 3rd so she was insinuating that it was only fitting that we walked away with a 1st place finish along with the golden cowbell. We liked what she was thinking and turns out she was right! :)
Photo: Beach Volleyball World
Of course, we had some lovely flight adventures and unfortunately but fortunately for me, it was Taryn’s turn to take the brunt of a poor neighbor. Her middle seat neighbor was an older gentleman that chose to wear sandals on the flight from MSY-JFK. And for just about the entire 2 hour and 45-minute flight he had his bare feet up on his legs and VERY close to Taryn’s personal space. She was utilizing only about half her seat and on the verge of an anxiety attack from the grossness. To distract her, we did our Olympic games readiness course which provided us with more information on logistics for everything games related. We saw pictures of the gear we are going to be receiving from Nike and Ralph Lauren which had us both pumped. It’s starting to all get real real real.
On our next flight from JFK-GVA (Geneva, Switzerland) Taryn again had an interesting experience. I was getting some z’s and woke up to Taryn being wide eyed and saying, “you are not going to believe what just happened!”. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyeballs were burning so I just listened with my eyes closed. She went to the restroom and while waiting saw a man pass out and bang his head. She went running to get a flight attendant from the front of the plane. He ended up being okay, but needless to say Taryn got 0 amounts of sleep. I got a little below my typical average, but I was zonked for the last hour. I woke up asking Taryn if I had missed the breakfast service to which she responded yes, but I also had a dream that I had the same exact conversation. I was a little delirious and the hardest part of the trek was next… the 2.5hr drive from the airport to the hotel. Taryn was a wee bit tired, so she slept for a decent amount of the winding ride through the mountains and of course I also took a little nap. I am like a little kid… if I need a nap just take me for a drive.
After unpacking, we hit Mangos to try the Indian spot that people had raved about. We did not understand the hype and left a little unsatisfied. It was time for a shower, some stretching and legs being up in the air. At 5:30/6 we were ready for dinner and since our sweetheart driver, Bernie, allowed us to make a pit stop at the Coop grocery store in the neighboring town on our way in (everything in Gstaad is closed on Sunday) we were able to eat dinner in our pjs. 8pm was the bedtime we were hoping to make it to, and let me tell you, it was TOUGHHH. As I was scrolling through Instagram my head kept falling. I was looking like a typical kid in school. Taryn caved and moved her time up to 7:30pm, so at 7:29pm she started chanting “one more minute!, one more minute!”. By 7:33pm she was snoring slightly… I forced myself to make it to 8 but the jet lag had me waking up at 10:23pm, 1:34am, 4:05am and 7:34am. Taryn was already getting ready to head down for breakfast when I got up since we both woke up ravenous. After enjoying the delicious breakfast and trying just about everything we went back to the room to get ready for our pre tourney lift. Like previously stated, this was our third year in Gstaad which has an elevation of 3,445 ft. I am very much use to being below sea level my whole life, so I think altitude really affects me. Midway through our workout I started to feel nauseated and ultimately decided to cut the workout short and just make our beautiful 10 min walk to the coop restaurant. It is the only somewhat reasonably priced restaurant in Gstaad and it is also a tasty home cooked meal with various options. We snagged some bread, deli meat, fruit, and protein puddings that don’t exist in America for dinner and stocked up on coke zeros and coffees for the week!
Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft asked us to practice with them which is crazy because as soon as we said yes, Taryn and I both agreed that they would make it out of the qualifier and most likely end up in our pool. (Didn’t think we would be playing them twice in the tourney.) It was a solid training session for us. Mike Placek and Paul Lotman, their coaches, ran us through a very productive practice with lots of movement which is exactly what we needed. It was probably one of our better pre tourney practices. All four of us were continuously just in awe of the mountain beauty as our backdrop. Unreal.
Since we are avid coffee drinkers now, we decided to start collecting coffee cups from all the places we go so we had to go shopping for some after practice. By 4:30 that evening both T and I were showered and in our pjs. We most definitely could have fallen asleep but kept ourselves busy with the exciting launch of our partnership with Zenni Eyewear. We also started going over our schedule and realized that we may actually play in the Hamburg Elite 16. Immediately we started looking at flights and found a very good deal, so we went ahead and booked it. Playing Hamburg is not a lock, but we are okay with getting the credits back for the flights since as you know we fly a lot. In addition to booking Hamburg, we had to decide what we were going to do for our explore day the following day. Our options were taking a 2hr 5min train ride to Bern, taking an hour and 47 min train ride to Thun, or taking an hour and 30min train ride back to Spiez (we went in 2023). We decided on the first option since we had heard great things about Bern, and I am sure glad we did. We spent the scenic 2 hour and 5 min train ride chit chatting about life. Also, like every other trip, we each brought up how thankful we are for calling this “work” just about every hour. For all things Bern check out our vlog!
We returned just in time for our 6 o’clock treatment window. Continuously grateful that USA Volleyball sends providers on these trips because Taryn and I both felt like new people after seeing them. Our Tuesday evening routine looked similar to Monday with our same dinner and us eating it in pjs. Taryn spent the rest of the evening shockingly on FaceTime with her family and fiancé while I got to editing our Bern vlog.
Wednesday, aka our chill day before the tourney, we switched it up slightly and decided to practice with a team instead of just ourselves. It was again a very productive practice run by the Italians Menegatti/Gottardi coach. Like Monday, we were clicking on the court. You could tell we had just come from 3 weeks of solid training. I would say our precision and cohesiveness sure carried over into pool play.
I personally loved that we were not slated to play on both Thursday and Friday until after noon. Having a chill and slow morning is so nice! We even got to do some schedule planning before heading out to the courts to compete for the first time in 39 days. We were in sync or as my mom called it, “it looked like y’all were dancing out there.” We could practically do no wrong or even if we did, we bounced back immediately. After two wins on the day, we were feeling good mentally, but the body was not feeling too hot. Arbhie, our ATC provider, walked me through some new things for me to do post-game since I had zero post-game routine which I now realize is very bad. Now, I do some solid stretching post-game especially for my hamstrings, hip flexors and glutes. You may see a new and improved Kristen hopefully in Paris! Love finding ways to get 1% better that don’t even involve volleyball.
Thank you Arbhie (left) & Chad (right)
Dinners during the tournament in Gstaad really force communication between the women’s teams since we are seated all together in a small room. That Thursday night we were chatting about different languages with Gottardi/Menegatti & Duda/AP. We learned that in Portuguese they say ciao solely as a goodbye, whereas, in Italian they say ciao as a greeting and goodbye. And ciao ciao is used as a more friendly greeting/goodbye so now anytime we see the Italians we must say ciao ciao.
Friday’s game wasn’t until 4pm but sleep wasn’t great, so I was up at 7:45am heading down to breakfast. I really looked forward to eating the Bircher muesli they had prepared for us. It may be my new favorite addiction right now. I even went back for more right before breakfast closed at 10:30am and before T and I went for a little stroll around the town to get out of the room and do some movement. Gametime came quickly and like the day prior we were clicking and pulling out the win in 2 quick sets. What some of you might not have noticed is that I was extremely bloated and uncomfortable. About midway through the first set against Latvia my stomach became like a brick, and I could not do anything about it. Sometimes it is unfortunate that we do choose to play in bathing suits because you can’t hide anything. From that game onward, I was continuing to have digestive issues and this same scenario continued to happen during our other matches. I was not personally thriving, but volleyball wise we were -> to the quarterfinals!
The quarters game was moved up due to the impending weather but not sure moving it up did anything. We experienced just about every single element during the match… sun, clouds, chilly, breezy, sprinkling rain, and decent rain downfall, but both teams had to deal with it. In pool play we were clicking, in the quarters game we were not. We were making mistakes and uncharacteristic plays. Credit Stam/Schoon for putting us in these difficult positions but we were not helping ourselves. The game was going back and forth on the scoreboard and also momentum wise. Even though that was our first game of the day, T and I were both very winded and tired. I just kept falling back on our training in the heat at Mangos to push me through. When the final ball went over Schoon’s head and in the court, I pretty much collapsed into T’s arms which almost knocked her over because she could hardly hold herself up. It was a battle, and we luckily came out on the winning side and into the medal rounds for a chance to bring home another infamous cowbell. We slowly walked into the physio room where our fellow USA teammates were already getting treatment and clearly excited since they also punched their ticket to the semifinals. As they were leaving they conveyed their congratulations to which we dittoed and I also excitedly said, “hey, we get another night in the hotel room. We don’t get kicked out. We save monies!” to which we all cheered in jubilation.
Being in Europe at this time was fun because the EURO cup was going on and it just so happened that Switzerland was playing in the quarters that evening. All TVs in the town had numerous eyes glued to them. The game was going on at the same time the men were playing their semifinal matches and it took us a little bit to realize why the stands for the men’s semifinals were not packed. It dawned on us that the only thing that could keep the Gstaadion stands empty would be soccer.
Photo: Beach Volleyball World
Championship Sunday never gets old. A packed Gstaadion with every single person in the crowd in sync with their cheers and hand motions is a sight to see. Unfortunately, we did not provide the fans with our greatest display of volleyball in both the semis and finals but somehow, we were able to end up standing on the top podium holding our hands over our hearts and watching the American flag rise up. Absolute goose bump moments and if you watched you saw I kept closing my eyes… I was definitely doing some visualizing and dreaming for the coming weeks. A little funny moment prior to getting on the podium -> we went around high fiving all the volunteers and also the men’s podium teams. 6’7” André from Brazil jokingly held his hands really high to which I could not reach and did not have another jump in me to even try (I don’t think I would have reached them anyway ha). Taryn was yelling at him from the podium in my defense, and David Ahman came to my rescue by going really low for his high five which I greatly appreciated. It’s fun that we have been on tour now for 3 years and feel like we fit in and can joke with the other teams or rather they feel like they can joke with us!
Not much celebrating happened as we were both absolutely exhausted from lack of quality sleep, and mental and physical exhaustion. We enjoyed the provided and free dinner in our hotel, and I treated myself with a zero caffeine coke zero followed by the remainder of our chocolate from Bern.
Neither one of us could sleep but looking over and seeing our cowbells in the provided duffle bags made it okay. Once again Gstaad was an absolute magical time. From its beauty to the insanely kind and supportive people it is UNMATCHED. I cannot express enough how much I recommend you planning a trip to this tourney at least once.
By: Kristen Nuss
