CHICAGO — As good as they are, Terese Cannon and Taryn Kloth seemed to be reduced to spectators at times Saturday afternoon as two of the best beach volleyball defensive players in the game, Sarah Sponcil and Kristen Nuss, went at it in the quarterfinals of AVP Chicago.
Jumbo after jumbo, which, for the uninitiated, are long, arcing, often indefensible shots into the angle, over the block.
“There was one when you did it and then she did it and you did it and then she did it,” Cannon said with a laugh as she looked at Sponcil. “And I was like, this is fun.”
Fun indeed. Ultimately second-seeded Sponcil and Cannon got past sixth-seeded Kloth and Nuss 21-19, 18-21, 20-18 to move into Sunday’s AVP Gold Series Chicago Open.
“That was fun,” Sponcil said. “That’s the one that you remember.”
She and Nuss simply made play after play. And on a couple of those by Nuss, Sponcil admitted, “It’s like, I’ve got to give you credit on the jumbos. Sometimes you can’t turn around. I can’t get that.”
Both Sponcil, the Olympian, and Cannon play right-handed, but write with their left hands. They played together here in 2018 and also got to the semifinals, but took a hard road. This season, they broke through and won their first AVP together two months ago in Hermosa Beach and finished second a month ago in Atlanta. Sponcil knows how important it can be to keep winning and play the minimum.
“You get one less match, you get to watch the people that play in the fifth-place round in the morning,” Sponcil said.
“You want to get that extra hour to sleep in and put your feet up,” Cannon added.
Also in the semifinals are fourth-seeded Kelly Cheng and Betsi Flint, who won a rematch of the Manhattan Beach final, this time beating top-seeded Sara Hughes and Kelley Kolinske 21-19, 19-21, 15-10.
“We wanted to make a statement in that match and I think we did that,” said Cheng, who added that it wasn’t lost on her and Flint when they were up 13-0 in the third. At the MBO, that was the lead they squandered to Hughes and Kolinske.
“We talked a lot about how we want to write our own story. It’s in our hands,” Cheng said.
Kloth and Nuss will play fifth-seeded Tina Graudina, the Latvian Olympian, and Sarah Pavan, the Canadian Olympian, paired for the first time. They faced elimination but overpowered 14th-seeded Kim Hildreth and…
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