Rivo Vesik was sitting beyond the end line during April’s Guadalajara Challenge, in the nervewracking position familiar to all international beach volleyball coaches: complete and total helplessness.
Once the match begins — in this case, that match was his Swiss pair of Nina Brunner and Tanja Huberli vs. Canada’s Sophie Bukovec and Heather Bansley — you can do nothing but watch.
For years, his team had established itself as one of the world’s best. Brunner an elite defender, Huberli a superb blocker. Two-time European Champs.
Yet the wins eluded them. Talented and successful as they were, they hadn’t won a single gold on the Beach Pro Tour.
What, he was asked, were they missing? On paper, they had every ingredient: spectacular defender, physical blocker who can hit angles only select few in the world could, two aggressive serves that could get hot on a moment’s notice.
He laughed and shrugged.
Confidence, he said. That American type of confidence.
Four months later, it would seem they’ve found it.
Since that tournament in Guadalajara, Brunner and Huberli have won their first tournament on the Beach Pro Tour — the Tepic Elite16 in May — took silver a few weeks later in Espinho, Portugal, and are playing arguably the best beach volleyball of anyone in the Olympic Games.
The latter half of that statement, on Tuesday evening in Paris, came at the expense of Americans Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, as Switzerland won, 21-18, 21-19 in an excellent quarterfinal.
Like Brunner and Huberli, Cheng and Hughes entered Tuesday’s quarterfinal undefeated, having dropped just a single set. Brunner and Huberli hadn’t even done that, winning all eight sets they’d played, many by margins that would be called unsportsmanlike at the youth level.
The question, then, was this: With everything — defense, offense, serving, everything — going in the proper direction for the Swiss, did they have the confidence and mental makeup to upset the World Champs and make their first Olympic semifinals?
They left no doubt.
Only once did Switzerland waver in their sweep over Cheng and Hughes. Up 11-10 in the second set up the technical timeout, Brunner and Huberli allowed a 4-1 USA run and were now staring down a 12-14 deficit, their biggest of the match. Brunner, who at that point was siding out at 82 percent for the tournament, highest in the field, was struggling with Hughes’ short float serves….
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