CHICAGO — Of course they went three.
“Wow! Oh, my gosh,” Kristen Nuss said. “That was fun.”
“That was fun,” Taryn Kloth added with a giggle.
And fun to watch, as sixth-seeded Nuss and Kloth beat third-seeded Canadian Olympians Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes 21-18, 17-21, 15-10 in the rain to win the AVP Gold Series Chicago Open.
The victory was their first on the AVP Tour since they opened the season by winning Austin four months ago. Not only did it earn them a berth into the AVP Phoenix Championships on September 23-24 — it also netted them $30,000.
“That was tiring but such fun. It’s just fun to be in battles like that,” Nuss said. “Who doesn’t love that? Obviously you want to blow out a team sometimes, but who doesn’t love the high-level, point-after-point, get after it back-and-forth fun?”
That was the M.O. all weekend for the second-year pros.
“I don’t know why we keep doing that ourselves,” Kloth said.
To wit:
They opened Friday with a 21-17, 28-26 victory over Emily Day and Savvy Simo. Then they beat Wilkerson and Humana-Paredes 21-18, 21-15 on Friday afternoon, which by Sunday felt like eons ago.
Saturday, things got dicey. After they lost to Sarah Sponcil and Terese Cannon 21-19, 18-21, 18-20 their work would be cut out for them on Sunday.
“We love a dogfight,” Kloth said. “Going into this weekend I was like I don’t care what happens but we are not backing down and after taking that loss it was like a shot to the heart. And then you have to battle back and there’s nothing else you can do about it.”
“That’s our mentality,” Nuss said. “Go out and fight.”
They opened the final day by beating Canadian Olympian Sarah Pavan and Latvian Olympian Tina Graudina 12-21, 21-18, 17-15.
That got them into the semifinals, where they knocked off Kelly Cheng and Betsi Flint 15-21, 21-19, 25-23. In the second set alone they twice squandered four-point leads and faced match point at 22-21 before winning it on a Nuss dribbler ace and a Kloth kill.
In the first set of the final they came back from being down 9-15 and still trailed 17-18 before scoring the last four points. In the third set, they built a 13-6 lead, saw that gap closed to 13-10, and then finished it when Humana-Paredes hit wide and Kloth blocked her on the next point to end it.
“I play with my rock. Kristen is…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Volleyballmag.com…