Former LSU Beach Stars Kloth and Nuss Rewrite The Script All The Way To The Olympics
PARIS – Former LSU Beach Volleyball Stars Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, currently the No. 2 ranked women’s beach pair in the world, will begin competition at the Paris Olympics on Saturday. Training in Baton Rouge and never splitting up as a duo, TKN has rewritten the script in the professional beach volleyball world.
“I want to change the script of what beach volleyball is,” Nuss said on their TKN mini documentary Pointing Two Paris. “When you become a pro, you have to go to California. I don’t like that. Louisiana is my home. I want to do it here. I want to prove these people wrong.
“We decided that Paris 2024, that was our goal and we wanted to be Gold Medalists. We had zero points and we had to figure out how we were going to get into these international tournaments and so many people were telling us to split up.”
“Those moments were really challenging,” Kloth added. “I started to believe them after the 100th, 200th, 300th person was telling us. We were freaking out. How are we not listening to any of the experts? It was going against all the rules and everything we were supposed to do (to qualify), we did not do.”
The duo will have three matches in Pool B to earn a spot to advance. The beach volleyball tournament will run for nearly the entirety of the Olympics as it starts Saturday, the day following the opening ceremony, and will run through August 10, the day before the closing ceremony. This year’s Olympic Beach Volleyball stadium seats 13,000 and is built at the base of the Eiffel Tower.
“From the beginning (making the Olympics) has been our goal, but our goal is bringing home a medal,” Nuss said during an interview with WDSU. “For both of us, we did have to take a minute and kind of celebrate that we did make it because to us, the job is not done. We want to bring some sort of hardware back from this.”
Team TKN Pool Play Schedule:
Saturday, July 27 at 3 p.m. CT (NBC)
Taryn Kloth/Kristen Nuss (USA) vs. Sophie Bukovec/Heather Bansley (Canada)
Monday, July 29 at 3 p.m. CT (NBC)
Taryn Kloth/Kristen Nuss (USA) vs. Mariafe Artacho del Solar/Taliqua Clancy (Australia)
Thursday, August 1 at 3 p.m. CT (Peacock)
Taryn Kloth/Kristen Nuss (USA) vs. Chen Xue/Xinyi X.Y. (China)
TKN has won its previous two world entries, most recently at Beach Volleyball Gstaad just over two weeks ago. Through Olympic qualifying in 2023, Kloth and Nuss won three events, medaling in seven. The seven podium finishes marked the most in a year by an American pair since Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross in 2016. But before they ascended to become one of the most dominant pairs in the world, Kloth and Nuss found each other at LSU where they decided they would rewrite the script for what it means to be a professional beach volleyball pair.
Kloth and Nuss were seniors, playing with different partners, during the 2020 season which ended prematurely when LSU held the No. 1 ranking in the nation. They both opted to return for their additional year of eligibility and first started playing as a tandem during the Summer of 2020 after some Covid restrictions had been lifted. Kloth and Nuss promptly won the three tournaments they entered together and showed what a dominant forced they could form in the sand.
“(Our first tournament) was kind of like the turning point for both us to be like, we can actually do this at the next level,” Nuss said on Pointing Two Paris.
The 5-6 Nuss had previously partnered with Claire Coppola at LSU and the duo became just the third college beach pair ever to surpass 100 victories together. The 6-4 Kloth, an indoor volleyball All-America, transferred to LSU prior to the 2019 season to give beach volleyball a go. Kloth and Kelli Greene-Agnew were perfect during the shortened 2020 season, going 13-0 without dropping a set.
After having success in late 2020 playing together, it was clear that Kloth and Nuss possessed a unique chemistry as a duo that could propel them to unique heights as a pair at LSU in 2021 and beyond. Coach Russell Brock paired them up on Court 1 for the upcoming season and greatness ensued.
They quickly ascended the college beach game, becoming the nation’s best and most dominant pair. When the season settled following the Tigers’ final match at the NCAA Championship Tournament in Gulf Shores, Kloth and Nuss were a perfect 36-0. Nuss finished her college career with 136 victories to become the winningest player in college beach volleyball history. Despite being 5-6, the shortest player competing in beach volleyball at the Olympics since 1996, Nuss’ unique athleticism has allowed her to become the top defender in the world. And Kloth, following her perfect 2020 with Greene-Agnew, finished her college career on a 49-match win streak.
“The conversation is, are they the best to ever step into the sand as a pair in the college game,” coach Brock asked back in 2021 during their final year at LSU.
Not long after the 2021 season ended, Kloth and Nuss released a video with LSU Beach Volleyball to announce that they would pursue a professional career in beach volleyball together. An unlikely duo was formed between a native of New Orleans (Nuss) and and native of Sioux Falls (Kloth), training together not in the beach volleyball mecca of Los Angeles with other pros, but in the humidity of Baton Rouge at Mango’s with junior players. Team TKN was formed and their goal was to rewrite the script of what it means to be a professional beach volleyball pair and ascend quickly enough to earn a spot in this year’s Olympics. But that would come with its challenges.
Beach volleyball experts chimed in that, despite their wishes to play only with each other, at some point the pair would need to break apart. Both Kloth and Nuss started with zero qualifying points. Those points allow players to earn entry into events that have Olympic qualifying implications. If they split up and played with other partners who already had points, they could get into certain tournaments and earn the points for themselves before coming back together as a pair. But, in a sport where it is common to jump from partner to partner, that is not how rewriting the script goes and they were committed to remain steadfast as a pair and go at this together.
Their professional career started stateside on the AVP Tour. In their first AVP Gold Series entry in Atlanta, Kloth and Nuss introduced themselves as the new kids on the block, playing their way out of the qualifying and into the main draw, dominating the sand en route to a first place finish. They were named AVP Co-Rookies of the Year in 2021 and Nuss earned AVP Defender of the Year honors. In 2022, Kloth and Nuss won three more AVP titles as the only duo on tour to win multiple events that season. At this point, they had proven themselves as a formidable professional pair and were ready to take the next step competing in international events that would allow them to begin earning qualifying points for the Olympics.
With no points to qualify in international events, TKN finally caved to what the experts were saying and Kloth was to go play in a tournament with another partner to earn some points. As chance has it though, the partner Kloth was to play with had not received a Covid vaccination and was thus not allowed to play in the tournament in Australia. With how the rules were laid out, Kloth was in the tournament, and, at this point, she could play with any other partner of her choosing. By fate, TKN was able to stay paired together for the 2022 Beach Volleyball World Coolangatta, Australias. Like they did in their first AVP entry in Atlanta, TKN marched through the qualifier and notched seven consecutive victories to claim the championship and 400 international points, giving them a chance to enter more international events and accumulate more points.
Two weeks later in Turkey, once again Kloth and Nuss found themselves in a championship match. This time they earned Gold by defeating the 2021 Olympic Silver Medalist duo of Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy, whom TKN will square off against on Monday during its second match of pool play. The year of 2022 saw Kloth and Nuss begin to prove the experts wrong. Within the span of a couple of weeks, TKN went from having zero points to having a chance to play in the highest level beach volleyball events, earning multiple fifth place finishes to end the season.
“Having a full season under our belt of knowing what to expect and how to approach the international game, that made the difference for me,” Nuss said on SANDCAST explain what she learned through their first full international season. “And knowing that we were capable of being successful and having that confidence.”
“I would say mine is way more experience,” Kloth added who only started playing beach in 2019. “I still, every single day, I’m learning so much. I’m trying to get better and see the different things that are happening.”
The year of 2023 saw them put pedal to medal, climbing the world rankings. The beginning of the year saw them having to play in tournament qualifiers to earn entry into main draws and by the end of the year they were ranked as one of the top teams in the world. Kloth and Nuss were relentless in their pursuit of qualifying for this year’s Olympics. In 11 entries on the Beach Pro Tour, they never finished outside of the top-five. TKN medaled in seven events, including three Golds. Their final Gold of the year came in December at Doha, Qatar in the Beach Pro Tour Finals which featured a tournament among the top 10 pairs in world.
“(Taryn) pulled up our goals from (2023) and it was like, oh my goodness, we hit that, we hit that, we hit that, we hit that,” Nuss told SANDCAST. “It was a pretty successful year.”
Following their impressive run last year, by the start of this year, TKN had mathematically earned enough points to lock in their spot for Paris. Through the first half of this year, more success has followed as they have maintained the No. 2 spot in the world rankings as they continue to rewrite the script, now with their goals of bring home the Olympic Gold set in their sights.