Former USC stars Kelly Cheng, Sara Hughes bring innovative relationship to Olympic beach volleyball

HUNTINGTON BEACH — The shared creative expression, as much as anything, is what gets Kelly Cheng out of bed in the morning.

The court is she and Sara Hughes’ sandbox, a 26-by-52-foot range where they have freedom to roam. They spent three years together as partners on the beach at USC, going 147-4 and forming one of the most dominant tandems ever in college beach volleyball. They are linked by history, and something deeper, the innate desire to push the very forefronts of this game they love.

“They got so comfortable with each other at USC,” former USC coach Anna Collier reflected, “so then it kind of gets to – the ridiculous.”

You know the ridiculous, with them, when you see it. It will come out on the grandest stages – Paris, no doubt, where local starlets Hughes and Cheng (formerly Claes) will represent their country in the Summer Olympics as partners for the first time. It comes out in the smaller moments, too, when they can fine-tune a unique offense that can become devastating in sync.

In May, Hughes and Cheng were up 19-7 in the first set of their first-round match at the annual AVP Huntington Beach Open, which they won in 2023. A softly-placed poke from Cheng sent the opposing pair, Macy Jerger and Megan Rice, both scrambling toward the front of the net. Rice lofted a prayer back. Hughes, the back defender, declared “Mine!”

Now, decades of volleyball tradition dictate she should simply redirect a dig to Cheng. But a haze of grey hung over this sleepy Friday afternoon, the larger beach crowds still a day away from arriving. So, uninhibited, Hughes went for ridiculous.

She squared her shoulders and simply two-hand-slapped Rice’s shot – on the first touch – to the expanse of open sand over both of their heads.

The crowd murmured. Cheng fist-pumped. Hughes raised her arms, in glee, to onlookers. Jerger stood frozen for a second, slouching her shoulders and staring in disbelief at Rice.

This was what Hughes and Cheng have wanted, since they rejoined forces for a 2024 Olympics push two years ago at a Starbucks in Long Beach. Their approach is carefully honed improvisation, free-flowing jazz, frequently abandoning the steady dig-set-spike bass line that has beaten through decades of beach volleyball. They attack from all angles and positions, this creativity built from the early days at USC, when it was still rough enough around the edges that Collier would have to tell Cheng rein it in after she’d slap a few balls out of Merle Norman Stadium’s courts and onto the bustle of Figueroa Street.

And as they head to Paris to chase a gold medal, their peers agree their offensive approach is on the very cutting-edge of beach volleyball itself.

“More and more teams are trying it,” said Megan Kraft, a fellow USC alumnus who competed against Hughes and Cheng in Huntington Beach. “Obviously, they’ve just mastered it a little quicker than others.”

“They’re definitely blazing the trail in that regard,” Rice said. “I think they’re one of the early adopters of that.”

What Hughes and Cheng love to run on the beach, more specifically, is best called an “option offense.” It starts with Hughes, a former Mater Dei High star who grew up on the sands of Newport Beach, such a student of the game that longtime mentor Misty May-Treanor – a three-time Olympic gold medalist who first met Hughes as a kid in Newport – simply doesn’t remember her leaving. Or, honestly, remember her coming. She was always just there.

It’s most often Hughes’ responsibility, off an opponent’s attack, to dig a capable pass to Cheng. From there, the 6-foot-2 red-haired dynamo is the key, fate resting on her instincts. Sometimes, she’ll simply redirect a tip off one pass directly over the net to a dead zone. Sometimes, she’ll set to the left of the court, an approach that lets Hughes fire from a more unconventional angle as opposed to a traditional set from right of middle, giving a right-handed hitter an easier lane to wind up.

If executed properly, it leads to a flurry of one-touch tips to dead spots that becomes demoralizing, as Kraft indicated, for opposing teams.

It’s also, among some purists, not very popular.

Cheng, who starred at Placentia’s El Dorado High, has one prior Olympic appearance under her belt, partnering with Sarah Sponcil at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games (held in 2021). During that run, Cheng’s husband and coach Jordan recalled, the option offense was a major part of Cheng’s game, as it is now. And “everyone and their mothers,” as Jordan stressed, “hated it.” Fans. Coaches. Announcers, even. The Chengs heard it.

That’s not how you should play the game. That’s not going to work. 

It didn’t, really. Cheng and Sponcil finished a distant ninth in Tokyo. But the offense is smoother now; as Cheng said, this system “wouldn’t work” without Hughes’ passing, two friends who have long reconnected and share joy in pushing the game forward.

“Everyone at the highest level, the top 16, 25 teams in the world, if you’re doing the same routine – passing straight up, setting straight up, and hitting from the same location – teams are really able to lock in on what you’re doing and take advantage of that,” Cheng said, describing the benefits of the system heading into the Olympics.

“So I think with the unpredictability of this offense, it’s really hard for a team to get in any type of rhythm.”

It’s a wonder, really, why the two decided to split up at all after college. Collier, for one, still doesn’t quite know why. National eyes were trained on them in their years of dominance at USC, and they melded together in a pressure-cooker, ignoring Collier’s directions of no sweets before tournaments and sneaking out together for midnight ice-cream runs.

Their partnership simply wasn’t working out after college, Collier felt, once the real world hit and simple logistics – down to booking travel and securing balls – got in the way. They both needed to “grow up,” Hughes said, and learn what it meant to be a professional. A few years later, now, they’re primed for the Olympics, the third-ranked team in the world by Olympic points with the 2023 FIVB World Championships title on their résumé.

Trickery might work, in Paris, starting with their first preliminary match on Sunday. It might not. But they are innovators either way, more teams internationally on the women’s side emphasizing the option. It’s always been this way, dating to USC, their first couple years of college competition coming as the NCAA was still deciding whether to adopt the sport. And Collier, sensing their role in a moment, would place a larger weight firmly on their shoulders.

“It’s not just for USC,” Collier would tell them. “It’s not just for you. It’s for every little girl that’s looking at you from the stands.”

Years later, there will be thousands more watching in Paris, watching through television screens, watching the two play in their sandbox on the world’s largest stage.