3X NCAA Champ Nourse Twins have “nothing else but to be themselves”

HERMOSA BEACH, California — There were roughly 11,000 people surrounding court three in Gulf Shores, Alabama this past spring. Another 200,000-plus were tuning in on ESPN, all eyes on a single, NCAA Championship-deciding match. For NCAA beach volleyball, there is no bigger platform. No larger moment. Audrey and Nicole Nourse were in the position that Nicole describes as “every athletes’ dream, or it should be if you play the sport.”

They were 15 points away from securing an unprecedented third straight NCAA Championship for USC.

They didn’t notice.

To the Nourses in that moment, it wasn’t a 2-2 split between USC and UCLA, the two most dynastic forces in the sport. There wasn’t an NCAA Championship on the line. It was just two sisters playing beach volleyball. Nothing more.

“That final, I was in such a flow state. I couldn’t hear the crowd around me, I couldn’t hear anything except for my sister,” Nicole, the lefty who plays right-side, said. “That’s kind of exactly where you want to be in that position. Sometimes it’s hard to get there. Your mind is a muscle. You gotta work it. Luckily we’ve done the preparation to feel comfortable in those moments.”

It is no accident, no simple luck of timing, that the Nourses slipped into that flow state when they needed it most, when their teammates needed them most, when history was potentially in the making. Coaches, with hindsight in perfect 20/20 vision, will almost always point to whichever team sealed the win and say that there is nobody else they would rather have out there. Sure enough, that’s exactly what Dain Blanton said on ESPN after the Nourses sealed up a 21-18, 19-21, 15-11 NCAA Championship-winning victory over Haley Hallgren and Rileigh Powers.

Cliche as it was that Blanton said those words, you can’t really blame him, either.

The Nourses hadn’t lost in Gulf Shores in two years. In 2022, they didn’t even drop a set in four matches en route to a second straight NCAA Championship. Physically, they’re talented. No question about it. Two of the best ball-control players in the country who have been hand-setting since they were 12, architecting their own spread offense in youth tournaments up and down California, tinkering with it to reach the highest levels in the NCAA. But physical gifts only get one so far, especially when your competition includes AVP main draw players for…