PARIS (AP) — A South Dakota native, Taryn Kloth had never even played beach volleyball until after she graduated from Creighton as a star in the indoor version of the sport. In pursuit of a business degree, she landed at LSU without any beach skills at all. “I actually got dismantled.
I was horrible. I couldn’t even talk and walk in the sand at the same time,” she said. “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 at LSU, 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 on Saturday night, 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 a.