What storyline would you like? You can have your pick of the litter.
They’re all fit for Hollywood, really. Fitting, too, seeing as Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes live not too far from there.
Would you like the coming of age storyline? They have it.
Here they are, Sponcil and Claes, 24 and 25 years old, respectively, the youngest team in this Olympic race. They began their run at the Tokyo Olympics before Sponcil had even graduated college. Rather than tossing her cap in Westwood, she held an amusing little ceremony overseas, on center court during an FIVB. Two years later, they won their first gold medal as a team, on Saturday night in Sochi, Russia, defeating Swiss Tanja Huberli and Nina Betschart.
Some timing, too. That gold medal gave them the hop, skip, and jump they needed to grab ahold of the second American berth into the Tokyo Olympics. That gold medal was perhaps the penultimate layer of this coming of age tale, for it has all but sealed them as the youngest American Olympic beach volleyball team in history, and that’s no small history, either. That history includes individuals who don’t even need last names, men such as Karch and Sinjin, women such as Kerri and Misty.
No team has done it younger than Claes and Sponcil, should they hang onto that berth in Ostrava next week.
Ah, but maybe you’ve been here, done that, with the coming of age stuff. It’s possible you’re interested in the passing of the torch storyline.
Kerri Walsh Jennings is the greatest to ever play this game. She might be the greatest to play any game, for that matter. Five times, she’s been to the Olympics. Thrice she’s won gold. In 2016, she claimed bronze. She’s the GOAT.
And on Saturday night, she was passed by the generation she inspired. Claes and Sponcil were both raised watching Walsh Jennings win those gold medals on television. They are one of hundreds and thousands who sought to one day do what Walsh Jennings did, who pushed to win the tournaments Walsh Jennings won.
On Saturday night, they did that and then some.
Claes and Sponcil beat Betschart and Huberli not only to win gold in Sochi, but they gave themselves a shot to win gold on the biggest beach volleyball stage of them all: The Olympic Games.
The torch has been passed.
Claes and Sponcil are no longer the future.
They are the present.
That, my friends, is the story.
That is the reality: Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil are playing every bit the role of the best team in the world. That’s not hyperbole, just simple truth.
On their road to gold in Sochi, they beat Brazilians Agatha and Duda. They beat April Ross and Alix Klineman. They beat Russian youngsters Nadezda Makroguzova and Svetlana Kholomina. They beat Betschart and Huberli. They won over young and old, veteran and up-and-comer, established and burgeoning.
They won gold.
And in doing so, they gave themselves a chance to Chase Gold on the game’s biggest stage: The Olympic Games.
