“I didn’t think that was possible”: Six USA teams claim top spot in pool at World Champs
TLAXCALA, MEXICO — The messages that lit up my phone on Monday night were virtually indistinguishable than the ones on Sunday, when Miles Evans and Chase Budinger flipped the men’s World Championship field upside down and inside out with a single blowout win over Ukraine.
“Did they do it?”
Just as Budinger and Evans did it on Sunday evening, surviving on point differential in their final round of pool with an unexpectedly dominant win, so, too, did Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft, albeit in a slightly different manner, and with slightly less at stake.
While Budinger and Evans were playing for their World Championship lives, “I thought we were just playing for second and a day off,” Cannon admitted.
They’d dropped their opener to Spain’s Tania Moreno and Daniela Alvarez (26-28, 15-21) and rebounded to beat Mexico’s youngsters, Ivanna Rivera and Susana Torres (21-11, 22-20). It left their point differential in a good-not-great spot. With Spain expected to beat Mexico — they did, 21-16, 21-15 — a win over top-seeded China was needed to finish second. First in pool was mostly an afterthought, because even with a win, it would still be a three-way tie for the top three spots, as all teams would stand 2-1, and China’s differential was substantial.
But 9 p.m. matches are, evidently, something of a witching hour for USA teams, when the unlikely becomes slightly possible and the slightly possible becomes real and even then fans doing the math are left wondering: “Did they do it?”
Nine o’clock was the onset of Budinger and Evans’ Hail Mary. And 9 o’clock was the onset of a less dramatic but still unlikely result for Cannon and Kraft, a 22-20, 21-14 win that padded another nine points to their differential. Good enough not just for second in pool and a guaranteed spot in the round of 32, but first, jumping both Spain and China in a single match.
“I didn’t even think that was possible,” Cannon said afterwards.
It’s spooky season.
It’s World Champs.
It’s beach volleyball after dark.
Anything goes in Mexico.
And Americans seem to take well to Mexico.
Cannon and Kraft were the last of six USA pairs to claim the top spot in their respective pool, joining Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, Miles Partain and Andy Benesh, and Crabb and Brunner. All of them will now enjoy a day off on Tuesday, able to relax, maybe watch the lucky loser matches, maybe not. Maybe practice, maybe rest. Maybe lift, maybe just sort of stretch around, have an acai bowl and a taco or two.
The day is theirs for the taking.
The only USA team in action on Tuesday will be Budinger and Evans, whose last-second heroics did not save them from the lucky loser rounds. They will play Mexico’s top pair in Juan Virgen and Miguel Sarabia at 2 p.m. local in Apizaco.
Tlaxcala, however, and a 9 o’clock match, be it a.m. or p.m., hasn’t been uniformly good for the Americans. The first match of the day on Monday was Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk’s last gasp, a 9 a.m. bout with Germans Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler in which they were outmatched and outplayed. A 22-20, 21-16 German win snuffed whatever hope remained for Bourne and Schalk in Mexico, sending them home on the first flight available, extending their international losing streak to nearly three months and counting since their last win, which came at the Edmonton Challenge in July.
Twelve hours later, with rain dumping from a coal-black sky, Alix Klineman and Hailey Harward were swept by China’s Jie Dong and Fan Wang (21-16, 21-19). A promising start to the tournament, in which Klineman and Harward upset Germans Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller (25-23, 21-14) was flipped by two straight losses, to Brazil’s Taina Silva and Victoria Lopes (21-17, 21-17) and Wang and Dong.
“Excited to keep competing,” Cannon said. “Finally feels like we’re getting used to the altitude and the environment and the fans, who are so loud and so awesome.”
And, it seems, getting used to 9 p.m. matches.
Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft celebrate another win as a new team/Volleyball World photo
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