TLAXCALA, MEXICO — The phone hit the ground, and there was really no one or anything to blame.
The fans forgave the offense.
There were Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, not just posing for selfie after selfie, but snapping them, relaying the phone between the rails separating court one and the throngs of fans in the stands. Between the adrenaline of a three-set thriller over Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova (19-21, 21-16, 15-11) and the dozens of phones and balls and hats and flags being passed from fan to Cheng to Hughes and back again, a fumble was only bound to happen. Sure enough, it did, and one unlucky fan — or lucky, seeing as they now have quite a fun story to tell, broken phone and all — had their phone tumble to the cement.
Everyone laughed. Nobody really minded much.
Just as nobody minded much when Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, lost amid a haze of autographs and photos and all sorts of World Championships merchandise to sign, sent a hat accidentally tumbling to the ground after a sweep over Brazil’s Agatha and Rebecca (24-22, 21-14).
“I dropped a hat!” Nuss said. “I dropped a hat!”
And then, well, she just kept on signing, same as Cheng and Hughes would do two hours later. There was nothing that could dampen the mood of Cheng and Hughes or Nuss and Kloth or anyone in their orbit on Thursday night. Another close call. Another match won. Another round closer to the title of World Champions.
“That was awesome,” Hughes said. “We feel amazing, a little shaky in the first set there but we got back to our game and when we did we just took over. That’s an amazing team, they’re so steady, we know we have to play our best and that’s what we did.”
It was the second straight three-set match for Hughes and Cheng. Just as they did the previous evening against Austria’s Klinger sisters, they shrugged off a bit of a shaky start — their words — and delivered their best when it mattered most, pushing at the end of the third set.
“I felt like we came out pretty slow in the first. I felt like the adjustment was we go for everything, we grovel for everything, aggressive through everything, and the tides just turned,” said Cheng, who served two aces in the third, including on match point. “It was awesome.”
And it was another awesome day for USA beach volleyball fans.
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