The world’s best women’s beach volleyball team will be determined on Sunday. America’s best team will probably be decided on Saturday.
Taryn Cross and Kristen Nass will face Kelly Chen and Sarah Hughes in the world championship semifinals in Mexico for a spot in Sunday’s gold medal match.
It will be the first time two U.S. women’s or men’s teams have faced off at the Olympics or on the world stage since Misty Mae-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings defeated April Ross and Jennifer Kesey in the 2012 Olympic final. It will be a deep game.
Cross and Nas are second in the world rankings and third in the Olympic world qualifiers, recently moving up one place on their respective lists ahead of Chen and Hughes. These two teams are very likely to earn his two 2024 U.S. Olympic spots.
Since Olympic beach volleyball debuted in 1996, the U.S. women’s team has typically had a clear top team.
For 10 years, May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings (excluding periods when each player was rested), then Walsh Jennings and Ross, and Ross and Alix Kleinman were the Tokyo gold medalists.
Ross and Kleinman have not played together since October 2021 as each player took maternity leave. Ross, 41, may be done playing internationally.
The torch appeared to be passed last fall after Chen (née Claes) and Hughes, who were once thought to be America’s heir apparent. Reunion after 4 years.
They won their first four tournaments together until the FIVB World Tour Finals in January.
Cross and Nuss, former LSU teammates, had to qualify to earn a main-draw spot in the international tournament starting in 2023.
They won their first top-level international title as No. 9 seeds at the end of April. They defeated Chen and Hughes (first time in five tries, according to BVBinfo.com), then Olympic silver medalists Mariafe Artacho and Tariqua Clancy (Australia) in the final two matches of that competition.
Cross and Nas won two more national AVP titles this summer, once again defeating Chen and Hughes. They had been runners-up in the previous two top-level international competitions leading up to the world championships.
At the world championships, Cross and Nuss won their first five matches in two sets, forcing them to three sets in Friday’s quarterfinals. Chen and Hughes lost in the final of group play and then dropped sets in their round of 32 and round of 16 matches before sweeping in the quarterfinals.
Chen and Hughes, who lost before the semifinals in their last three international tournaments, have a chance to re-establish themselves as America’s No. 1, and perhaps the world’s No. 1, over the next two days.
In the men’s tournament, reigning Olympic and world champions Anders Mol and Norway’s Christian Sorum were eliminated in Friday’s quarterfinals by Czech Republic’s Ondrzej Peršić and David Schweiner.
This ended the Norwegian’s 11-year streak of reaching the World Tour semi-finals going back more than a year.
