Andy Benesh and Miles Partain picked the hill — or sword, to use their parlance — they would die on in the Paris Olympic Games.
It’s a good word choice, sword. Their style of play — high passes, an on-two and jump-setting frequency that would make even Sweden blush — is high risk, high reward, the difference between winning and losing roughly as razor thin as the blade of the sword Benesh declared they’d live and die on in Paris.
On Wednesday evening in Paris, in a quarterfinal match against Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan, they proudly exited the Olympics on that very sword, losing 14-21, 16-21.
The score is indicative of how the match went. Qatar, as they have been all week, was dominant, borderline perfect. Cherif and Ahmed hit just eight errors to the USA’s 16, tallied just one service error to the USA’s six, dug eight balls to the USA’s five, and notched 26 kills to the USA’s 22.
There is no losing with those numbers.
Yet for Partain and Benesh, there will be no regrets. No what-ifs.
This is the style that got them to Paris. This is the style that pushed them into the quarterfinals after a resounding 21-17, 21-18 sweep over Italy’s Sam Cottafava and Paolo Nicolai. This is what they’ll be doing, as Partain said after a pool play win over Brazil’s George Wanderley and Andre Loyola, “for eternity.”
Sometimes the sword tips slightly in the wrong direction.
It was an intriguing matchup coming in. Cherif and Ahmed have one of the best track records against Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig among any team in the world. Every matchup between the two has gone three sets, including the match of these Olympic Games, a 20-18 three-set win for Qatar. Cherif is mobile enough to track the option and the jump-set, and Ahmed quick-twitch enough to pick up much of what gets behind him. Benesh and Partain are the closest comparable to Sweden as there is in the world.
Qatar was ready.
Cherif piled up five blocks and is now No. 3 for the tournament, behind Hellvig and Germany’s Nils Ehlers, despite only once going three sets. Ahmed’s seven digs vaulted him to tops in the field, five ahead of Ahman and seven more than Norway’s Christian Sorum, who is in the other semifinal.
Offensively, they were tremendous. They passed nearly perfect, allowing zero aces against one of the toughest serving teams in the field. Partain was limited to 2.5 digs per set, meaning any earned points virtually had to come from the block of Benesh….
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