HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Nearly 20 years ago, this is where it all began for Sara Hughes. This is the beach that became the foundation of the rest of her life, begetting the vision that would shape every step taken since.
“I remember holding the volleyball after the tryout thinking ‘This is the best sport in the world. This is what I want to do.’ Eight years old,” Hughes recalled months ago on SANDCAST. “I remember the exact spot I was: North side of the pier, Huntington Beach. Ever since that day, there was no doubt in my mind.”
Isn’t it awfully fitting, then, a delicious storyline, for the next, most anticipated chapter of Hughes’ career to begin where this entire storybook did in the first place? This weekend, for the final AVP Tour Series of this winding 2022 season, Hughes will be back in Huntington Beach. No longer an 8-year-old tot picking up a beach volleyball for the first time, she’s now a 27-year-old woman, an AVP champion, an Olympic hopeful and a bona fide favorite to qualify for the Paris Games in 2024. She’ll be debuting an old but new partnership with Kelly Cheng, and Huntington will provide the first glimpse at the team that will likely go down as the best pairing in NCAA beach volleyball history, a team that has far bigger designs as professionals.
It’s the perfect tune-up, so to speak. There is positively zero pressure on Cheng and Sara Hughes. They enter as the 1 seed, in a field that features mostly up-and-coming talents: Allie Wheeler and Deahna Kraft, Molly Turner and Kaitlyn Malaney, Hailey Harward and Kelly Reeves, Katie Dickens and Carly Sjkodt, Jessica Gaffney and Savvy Simo, Brook Bauer and Katie Horton, among others. They’ll have the freedom to experiment, to try numerous different offensive and defensive tricks and tactics, to feel each other out. It’s only been, oh, more than four years since they’ve stepped on the court together.
There will be much to iron out this weekend, which precedes back-to-back Volleyball World events in Torquay, Australia, where they will make their international debuts prior to the onset of Olympic qualifying, which will begin with the first event of the 2023 season. And, of course, it will be fun. Huntington is the home beach, so to speak, of both Cheng and Hughes. Both…
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