Terese Cannon looking to dance on the podium once more in Itapema

There is no shortage of downtime on the Beach Pro Tour. The busiest of days means a maximum of three matches, which can be a full one, indeed. But those are rare and few and far between. Which means, on most days, athletes are tasked with killing time, finding the difficult balancing act of enjoying a different country while staying as physically and mentally prepared as possible to win a medal. That mental preparation can look a bit different for some athletes.

Take Terese Cannon.

In November of 2021, Cannon had received what some might call her big break, a shot with an elite partner in Sara Hughes, her former teammate at USC. It was a promotion well-earned, with a silver medal in the Cervia one-star with Molly Turner and gold in Nijmegen with Delaney Mewhirter. Alas, after five cracks at a four-star that season, Cannon had her chance, straight into the main draw of the Itapema four-star with Hughes.

How’d she take the promotion? Studying film until dawn? Mobilizing and lifting in the gym? Repping, repping, and repping some more with the coaching staff? She did some of that, sure. But Cannon and Hughes also spent much of the evenings killing time by… line dancing.

Yes, line dancing. Footloose, to be specific.

That Sunday, they’d show it off to the thousands packing the stands in Itapema when they beat Taina Silva and Victoria Lopes to win bronze, dancing in celebration after the final ball landed.

Two years later, Cannon’s still dancing in Itapema, albeit with a different partner.

Now with Sarah Sponcil, the two are the last Americans standing in this week’s Itapema Challenge, sweeping both Andressa Cavalcanti and Vitoria De Souza and Finland’s Niina Ahtiainen and Taru Lahti on Saturday to earn a semifinal bout with China’s Chen Xue and Xinyi Xia.

It has been a triumphant return to the beach for Xue, the 2013 World Champion and a bronze medalist at the 2008 Beijing Games. She had surgery on her right shoulder in 2015 and, as she told Volleyball World, “it didn’t recover very well. After Tokyo [in 2021, where she finished ninth], I felt like I couldn’t keep playing like that and I decided to retire. Last year, the Chinese Federation hired a Brazilian coach (Ricardo de Freitas) and his staff did a very good job with my shoulder, so I felt that perhaps there was still a chance I could play for a little longer.”

Now here she is,…