Two months ago, Megan Kraft was a left-side blocker, wearing a USC Trojans tank-top, competing against NCAA talent on an NCAA stage.
On Saturday afternoon in Vienna, Austria, Kraft was, as she has been since leaving USC as a four-time NCAA champion, a right-side defender, wearing a USA Volleyball tank top, competing against Elite16 talent on the world’s biggest stage.
She looks the same in red, white and blue as she did in the garnet: Dominant.
Following a convincing 21-16, 22-20 sweep over Brazilians Agatha and Rebecca in the bronze-medal match of the Vienna Elite16, Kraft and another former Trojan, Terese Cannon, will return home from Europe with two medals in hand. Just eight days earlier this new pair went all the way to the Gstaad Elite16 final before losing to fellow Americans Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss.
“Megan’s amazing. She has completely switched positions,” said Cannon, who collected her eighth and ninth medals in the last two weeks in Gstaad and Vienna. “The fact that we’re able to have such success against incredible teams — it’s just been so fun. I’m excited to see where we go.”
For a moment, they almost — almost — went into a third set against Agatha and Rebecca. With Cannon and Kraft holding three match points up 20-17, Brazil erased it with a side out and consecutive earned points, putting the Americans under duress for the first time of the match. This is where a typical rookie fresh out of college might get pinched, the stress of a three-point edge building to a nervy crescendo.
Which is precisely where Kraft reminded everyone that she is no typical rookie.
A missed serve from Agatha gave the USA an additional match point, where Kraft, just two months into defending full-time, dug a bomb into the angle from Agatha and buried the ensuing swing down the seam for the match-clinching kill.
“We wanted to slow it down,” Kraft said. “They’re obviously a really good team, had a lot of momentum, we wanted to slow to down, trust our pass, and we just stayed steady, trusting each other, trusting the game plan.”
The game plan was, it became evident early on, to avoid Rebecca, both in serve receive and in defense. During their semifinal in Gstaad — a 21-18, 15-21, 15-13 win for Kraft and Cannon that put them in their first Elite16 final as a team —…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Volleyballmag.com…