Hot route! AVP Atlanta Gold Series begins Friday. Here’s everything you need to know

It is a unique style of training that Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth have taken to in the lead-up to the AVP Atlanta Gold Series, which begins on Friday and will be streamed on Bally Live and ESPN+. They were active on Wednesday, sure, but there was no sand in sight.

Nor was there a beach volleyball.

Instead of passing and setting and hitting volleyballs at Atlantic Station, Nuss and Kloth were 45 minutes down the road, in Flowery Branch, running routes and catching passes from Desmond Ridder, the sophomore quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons.

“You could say I had a little fun,” Nuss said.

Atlanta has long been a city where Nuss and Kloth have had a little fun. It is the site of their first AVP as professionals, and consequently the site of their first AVP win, when the two doe-eyed rookies marched through the qualifier and five straight main draw matches to claim their first of four victories and counting.

“I don’t know if I ever expected myself to win an AVP,” Nuss said later that summer. “I did think we were going to do well. I thought our game would transition to the pros. In college, especially on the top courts, you’re playing against teams who could play on the AVP. But winning it — Atlanta had such a weird feeling. Going into it, no one expected us to win this thing. But could we win it? I don’t know. I don’t know if I go in expecting to win. Obviously if we play well, winning is a high possibility, but I never go in thinking ‘This game’s ours.’ ”

There’s a chance that thought process has changed. Since their first victory in Atlanta in 2021, Nuss and Kloth have won tournaments all over the world, from Australia to Brazil, Turkey to Phoenix, Chicago to Mexico. This week, however, will be the stiffest test yet on the AVP. For the first time all year, everyone will be home.

Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes lead the seeding, as they should: Since teaming up in November of 2022, they have yet to drop a single AVP match, winning in Huntington Beach, New Orleans, and Huntington Beach again.

Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, fresh off their first Elite16 gold medal of the year in Montreal, seek their second AVP win of the year after taking the season-opener in Miami.

Terese Cannon and Sarah Sponcil made the final here a year ago, losing a thriller to Geena Urango and Julia Scoles. It’s been a mercurial year for those two, snaps of brilliance — a silver medal at the Ostrava Elite16, bronze at the Itapema Challenge — intermixed with bouts of strange finishes — seventh in New Orleans, a pair of 13ths in Gstaad and Montreal. Yet they are still very much the same team who won Hermosa a year ago and who has victories over nearly every elite team in the world. To tab them as the winners would hardly be a stretch of the imagination.

Then there are, of course, the most recent winners, Sarah Schermerhorn and Corinne Quiggle, who shrugged off what had been their worst stretch of tournaments to date and flew through the field in Hermosa, winning five straight matches to pick up their first AVP title as individuals and a team.

Indeed, storylines and elite teams abound this week in Atlanta. Below is a list of everything you need to know about this weekend’s AVP Gold Series.

Can Megan Rice do it again at AVP Atlanta? 

Prior to AVP Hermosa Beach in early July, Megan J. Rice — not to be confused with the Florida-based Megan Rice — had never made a Pro or Gold Series main draw. She wouldn’t have made Hermosa, either, had Toni Rodriguez not tweaked her knee in Denver a week before. But Rodriguez did tweak her knee, and Savvy Simo needed a last-minute fill-in. In came Rice, who turned out to be the pickup of the year, as the two, unbelievably, made the finals.

Once again, Rice is a last-minute fill-in. This time, it’s Betsi Flint who gave her the call. Flint’s usual partner, Julia Scoles, tweaked her knee in the finals of the Montreal Elite16 on Sunday and is opting to sit the weekend out.

“Due to a minor injury that I do not want to make worse,” Scoles said of her withdrawal. “I’m choosing to rest instead.”

So it’ll be Rice and Flint this week, seeded seventh, in Atlanta, matched up in the first round with Deahna Kraft and Zana Muno.

Whitmarsh success runs deep in Atlanta

Twenty-seven years ago in Atlanta, Mike Whitmarsh and Mike Dodd were awarded the first beach volleyball silver medal in an Olympic Games. They put on a scintillating run to the finals, winning four straight matches to earn a crack at the gold medal against Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes. It wasn’t meant to be, however, as Kiraly and Steffes won, 12-5, 12-8, in an old school, sideout-scoring match in front of a sold-out stadium in Atlanta.

This week, Whitmarsh’s daughter, Jaden, will be playing in just her second career main draw, alongside Carly Skjodt. Her first went well enough. Partnered with UCLA teammate Devon Newberry, Whitmarsh became the darling of the tournament, upsetting the eight and three seeds to finish seventh. Now with Skjodt, with whom she took a third in the Denver Tour Series to qualify for Atlanta, Whitmarsh will play Nuss and Kloth in the first round.

Baseypalooza comes to Atlanta

There’s more than a fair chance you’ve never heard of Lars and Gage Basey. Brothers from Lyons, Colorado, they haven’t traveled much when it comes to beach volleyball. With just four AVPs on their resume, the Baseys are something of local heroes in Denver. Two years in a row, they’ve commanded a crowd of thousands, piling up one upset after another. This past July 4 weekend, for the Denver Tour Series, they stunned Brenden Sander and Taylor Sander, and Jeremy Casebeer and Alvaro Filho. That punched their ticket to Atlanta, the first Pro or Gold Series main draw for both of them. They aren’t the only Colorado team in the mix, either.

Does Mike Groselle still have the AVP Atlanta magic?

In Atlanta of 2021, Mike Groselle, a big man with little on his professional resume, engineered the upsets of the season alongside DR Vander Meer. After sweeping their way through the qualifier, the two found themselves matched up with Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena. Such matchups are typically listless affairs, the top seed lazily taking care of the bottom seed. This was no such listless affair. Instead, Groselle and Vander Meer stunned Dalhausser and Lucena (21-19, 13-21, 15-11) and then backed it up with another win over Troy Field and Eric Beranek. They’d lose the next two but still finish an admirable fifth, which remains Groselle’s career-high. Now with good friend and fellow Colorado resident Nate Yang, Groselle will look to find more of the Atlanta magic.

Does Beach Pro Tour success translate to local dominance for Andy Benesh and Miles Partain?

With back-to-back-to-back medals on the Beach Pro Tour, Andy Benesh and Miles Partain have taken control of the American race to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. They lead in both gross points and average points per event, to the extent that it’s difficult to see a way in which any other American team will even get close to passing them. But will that success overseas translate to dominance on the AVP?

So far, yes. They’ve played just one AVP this season, in Huntington Beach, and they won, beating Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk in a long and entertaining final. It wasn’t easy, however. They had to make their way through the contender’s bracket after a quarterfinal loss to Bourne and Schalk, and required all three sets to beat Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb in the semifinals.

Atlanta, however, has been good to Partain, home to Partain’s first AVP win a year ago with Paul Lotman.

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