“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”
— — “Redemption Song,” Bob Marley 1980
The World Championships in Tlaxcala, Mexico proved to be a cosmically redemptive experience for many, but most especially for Sara Hughes, Ondrej Perusic, David Schweiner, Jonatan Hellvig, and last, but not least, USA Volleyball as a whole.
There are also some changes the beach-volleyball has to make and we’ll get to that later and some complaints and recommendations later.
The Olympic qualifying process is heavily skewed to those teams that can pile up points in the year BEFORE the Games. In 2018, Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng split, and Hughes partnered with Summer Ross. Ross was a teen prodigy, and on the surface this looked like a unit that would qualify for Tokyo when you consider Hughes and Ross played four AVP tournaments in 2018, winning twice, and lost in the finals the other two times. On the World Tour that summer they won in Moscow, knocking out April Ross and Alix Klineman in the quarters and Agatha and Duda in the finals.
As 2019 dawned, Hughes and Ross got a couple of thirds in AVP events, a third and a fourth in World Tour events, and a very solid fifth in the World Champs in Hamburg.
But not all was well in Hamburg.
I saw Hughes have an animated discussion with then-coach Jose Loiola in the bleachers bisecting courts 2 and 3. You knew at that point something was up. And sure enough, it was: Ross’ balky back was causing major problems and after two more tourneys she retired from the sport entirely at just 27.
Meanwhile, Hughes was stuck in a horrible quandary due to the “system” that rewards not the hottest teams in the world come the Olympics, but the ones that have avoided injuries, and played the most tournaments, so that they can drop their worst finishes, to amass enough points to qualify. So, for the pandemic-delayed 2021 Games in Tokyo, Hughes was, as they say, SOL. Two years of battling through the wilderness. With all the top players taken, Hughes fought the good fight. In 2021 she lost in FIVE consecutive country-quota qualifiers, not even sniffing the main draw playing with Emily Day.
Brief partnerships with Megan Kraft, and Terese Cannon followed. A Manhattan Open win with Kelley Kolinske salved some wounds, but that tourney did not provide points towards Olympic qualifying. But shortly thereafter, her…
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