Alix Klineman to make her post-partum debut

The unofficial fall break, the six-week beach volleyball hiatus between the Hamburg Elite16 and this week’s Paris Elite16, comes to an end on Wednesday, kicking off a second season of sorts that won’t end until December’s World Tour Finals.

It also happens to be arguably the most critical stretch of the Paris Olympic quad.

The following 11 weeks include Elite16s in Paris and Brazil — an Elite in Dubai is unlikely to be held as scheduled in early November — the World Championships in Mexico, and four Challenges, an almost non-stop blitz that will reshape the landscape of the Olympic qualifying race. Being the first stop of that run of events, the importance of Paris cannot be understated, as points earned in this weekend’s Elite16 will impact seeding and entry points for every event through the remainder of the season.

None more so than Hailey Harward and Alix Klineman.

Welcome back to the beach, Alix Klineman

While every other athlete has taken a six-week break, Klineman is on the heels of nearly two years off and is just three months post-partum from having her son, Theo. The fact that Klineman is healthy enough to play this quickly is remarkable in itself, and both she and Harward are under no illusions that they will vault straight to the top of the Olympic rankings with a few decent finishes. They’re chasing two of the top teams in the world in Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth (No. 3) and Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes (No. 4). They are under a time crunch with which no other team in the world can empathize, and that crunch makes virtually every match, and particularly the one-and-done qualifier matches on Wednesday, must-watch VolleyballTV.

They begin with Ukraine’s Ievgeniia Baieva and Valentyna Davidova, a sneaky good team who upset Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova at this year’s European Championships…which is exactly who they are likely to play should they win their first round, as the Latvians play Finland’s tireless duo, Niina Ahtiainen and Taru Lahti.

Introducing Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft

While Harward and Klineman are making a late push at the Paris Olympics, Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft are competing simply because playing beach volleyball is what they do. Cannon and Sarah Sponcil had once been as high as No. 4 in the world in the Olympic rankings, but after a string of discouraging finishes, Sponcil decided to sign with the upstart…