A birthday gift and a goal
On her 24th birthday in 2021, beach volleyball player Taryn Kloth received an unusual present: an ankle bracelet inscribed with the future date, August 11, 2024.
The date was significant, said gift giver Kristen Nuss, Kloth's best friend and beach volleyball partner at Louisiana State University.
"I put that date because I was like, 'On this day, we'll be gold medalists,'" admitted Nuss, who has a matching ankle bracelet.
But there was just one major obstacle in the pairs' plan to lift the gold at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games: they hadn't even turned pro yet.
The ankle bracelet started an unlikely journey for the duo, one of passion, vulnerability, commitment and a total rewrite of the professional beach volleyball script.
From indoors to the pro tour
In 2019, Kloth joined LSU's beach volleyball team. The South Dakota native joined the Tigers after four successful seasons of indoor volleyball at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Kloth led the Blue Jays to the NCAA Elite Eight her junior year and received an All-American Honorable Mention. She had done it all in indoor volleyball but had never played beach volleyball.
"She [Kloth] was not the first indoor transfer that I had seen make that transition over to the beach," said Nuss. "And it is funny the first week of seeing them in the sand. It really is comical. Obviously, the fundamentals are all the same, but it is a very different sport. And you really do just see them all get humbled a little bit."
By 2019, Nuss, a New Orleans native, had already been named to the All-American team multiple times with a different partner – but never counted Kloth out.
"Obviously, I also knew that there was so much potential there," said Nuss.
Kloth's potential began to shine, and by 2020, she had gone 13-0 during the season with a different partner. Later that year, the world shut down due to COVID-19, and after spending time at home, Kloth wanted to return to the sand.
"I was back up in South Dakota and I was like 'I'm sick of being cold.' So I called Kristen and I was like, 'Hey, can I come down and can we train together?'"
So, Kloth returned to Baton Rouge and spent the summer of 2020 playing in beach volleyball tournaments with Nuss. Not only were the pair having fun on the sand, but they were also taking home trophies and dismissing elite players. The pair did so well in the summer that when they returned to LSU in the fall, the coaches had them play together for the entirety of the season. They went 36-0 and earned All-America honors.
At the end of their 2021 season in May, Kloth and Nuss made a major announcement: they would turn pro. With help from LSU, they produced an announcement video that they would play professional tournaments together and were hoping for a qualification for the Paris Games. Even their announcement was a unique, never-before-seen move in beach volleyball.
"People, like, go to the draft, and they just announce that they are going to get drafted and stuff, and in beach volleyball, that never really happened, and a big thing for us was we wanted to rewrite the script, like do things differently and no one has ever come out of college and made a professional [announcement] video," said Nuss.
A brand and a battle for ranking points
With the pair's major announcement, they also launched a brand and website, "TKN Volleyball." TKN combined Kloth and Nuss's names, an inventive idea that helped the duo stand out on the sand courts.
"Everything in beach volleyball before this point was so individual, like you go to any event, you only hear people cheer for one specific player," said Nuss. "You never hear that joint chant kind of thing. We've been playing events, and when you hear a TKN chant, it's for us as a team, and that's just very cool."
After their pro announcement, their branded tandem and new website, Kloth and Nuss only had one thing left to do: play beach volleyball. With zero ranking points, they faced an uphill battle to make it to the main draw of tournaments, let alone the Olympics.
Down under in Coolangatta, Australia, the pair took a chance and competed for points in March of 2022. Kloth and Nuss were initially at the end of the tournament's reserve list and, somehow, two weeks before the tournament, found themselves in the last slot of the qualifier. For the pair to make it to the main draw, they first had to win two qualifying matches. There were no guarantees at the tournament, and despite the risk, the pair spent a significant amount of money on flights and accommodations and set out for their Olympic points campaign.
"So we took the gamble. We got in, and we ended up winning that tournament, which was the most insane week and weekend of my life," said Kloth.
That win in Australia propelled the pair to keep going, and in 2022, the team took home three AVP tournament titles and, more importantly, coveted ranking points.
Kloth and Nuss's battle wasn't just limited to the lines on the beach volleyball court but also the court of public perception. Despite the pair's early success on the beach volleyball sand, they encountered plenty of critics, detractors and naysayers who publicly stated the pair should break up.
"It was like former Olympians were on podcasts being like 'Yeah, I don't know how they're gonna do it. They really should probably split up'...It wasn't just like random people. It was very important people in the sport being like, 'I don't know if you guys can do it," admitted Nuss.
I was just so stubborn in that I was like no we can do it. There was just something in me that I was like, no, it's gonna happen, we're gonna figure it out.
Kloth and Nuss built on their 2022 season and reached the podium seven times in 2023, the most for an American team since Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross in 2016. In December, they won the beach volleyball tour finals and finished the season ranked No. 2 worldwide. At the start of the year, the pair discovered they had mathematically clinched their spot in the 2024 Olympic Games and punched their ticket to Paris.
Balancing their relationship on and off the court
Kloth and Nuss' partnership is rare in beach volleyball. Teams often split and find a new partner regularly. The commitment the pair made to each other so publicly was one built privately, tournament by tournament, a sisterhood forged in the sand.
While the two easily meshed on the court, their friendship took longer to burgeon. One year on Nuss's birthday, when the two were not yet close, Kloth approached Nuss on a whim to take a trip to Nashville. After purchasing the tickets, Nuss was curious how the trip would go.
"What are we going to talk about?" thought Nuss. "And now here we are. We traveled the world together and we spend so much time together."
As teammates, business partners and best friends, the duo must strike a delicate balance to maintain their relationship on all levels.
"I've never worked more diligently and harder in communication skills than with her because it is so important," said Kloth.
The pair regularly consult a sports psychologist to help them navigate their relationship on and off the court. Like any conscientious couple, Kloth and Nuss go out once a month on a volleyball-less date, something fun to get their heads away from the court and back into the friendship field.
"…One of us has to ask the other person on a date. And you can't bring up volleyball, no volleyball, not even a form of question about volleyball. They're [the dates] awesome," said Kloth.
The fellowship between the two volleyball players can be seen frequently on their social media. Together, they have a podcast called "Small Talk and Tall Tales," a play on their height disparity – Kloth is 6-foot-4, and Nuss is 5-foot-6, which is the most significant height difference for a U.S. Olympic beach volleyball team. On the pairs' YouTube channel, TKN Beach Volleyball, they replace their competitive composure with candor and vlog their travels, triumphs and disappointments on the beach volleyball tour.
Paris bound
Three years after they first put on their ankle bracelets, the once shiny, smooth bracelets have been worn down from sand, water and competitive wear – but their Olympic dream and commitment to each other still shines bright.
No matter what happens when the duo plays under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower this summer, Kloth and Nuss are committed to taking on the greatest game together: the game of life.
"We always say we would both rather give up volleyball than lose our friendship and our sisterhood. Because it really is so important and she is a forever friend and volleyball is going to end at some point but that is a relationship that can be lifelong," said Kloth.
