PARIS — Sunday’s Olympics women’s volleyball gold-medal match will cap both a 15-day-long tournament and a tremendous run for the USA women.
This team, held together at times the past three months by kinesiology tape, ice bags and intestinal fortitude, is on the unlikely cusp of winning it all.
The Americans (4-1) play Italy (5-0) at 1 p.m. local (7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific) Sunday as both a squad finally hitting on all cylinders but facing an opponent to which it lost twice in the span of a week in June.
Seemingly every USA player was injured at one time or another, some upon returning from their pro seasons, some as the summer progressed through Volleyball Nations League, and some here.
Yet, five matches later, here they are.
I was in the USA gym in Anaheim the second week of May. Annie Drews, the lefty opposite who has led the team in scoring here, spent most of the time on an exercise bike. The other opposite, Jordan Thompson, scrimmaged but was recovering from an injury.
The setter, Jordyn Poulter, appeared well on the way to being full strength but she was still, in essence, returning from total reconstructive knee surgery a year and a half earlier. She hadn’t played in a match since the operation.
The veteran leader of the team, outside Jordan Larson, made the decision not to play pro volleyball the past year. Instead, she trained while working as an assistant coach at Nebraska and, when the college season ended, headed to Anaheim to train for the sole purpose of making the team. It paid off.
And few of the players, fortunate enough to have played long into their pro seasons, had not even arrived in Anaheim, including Kathryn Plummer, who would become a first-time Olympian, veteran outside Kelsey Robinson Cook and middles Haleigh Washington and Dana Rettke.
Avery Skinner was there, looked great — the coolest thing was watching her scrimmage at the highest level with her younger sister, Madi — but we didn’t know if Avery would make the roster.
The competition in the gym was top-notch, but the team was leaving the next week for VNL.
The VNL results — and rosters — were mixed.
The first week in Rio, the USA went 2-2. In the second round, in Arlington, they went 2-2 again, but lost to Poland and Turkiye. The third week, in Fukuoka, Japan, saw the Americans go 3-1, but the lone loss: To…
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