It was going right. All of it. The Kristen Nuss defense, the Taryn Kloth blocking. The shots, the swings, the extended rallies — all going the proper direction for the USA in their ninth-place matchup of the Olympic Games, against Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson. All of it added up to a 14-9 lead in the first set over the No. 4 seed.
And then Brandie went Brandie.
Happens frequently. Frequently enough that, a year ago, Wilkerson was voted by her peers as the best blocker in the world by 12 percent over the runner-up, Brazil’s Ana Patricia Silva.
Before Monday’s first-round playoff matchup with Nuss and Kloth, Wilkerson hadn’t yet found her rhythm at the net. She had just eight blocks in four matches, ranking her sixth in the Olympics.
On Monday, she found her rhythm.
It was Wilkerson’s blocking that sparked a 6-0 run for the Canadians as they retook the lead in the opening set, 15-14, an edge they wouldn’t relinquish in a 21-19 win. Three of her five eventual blocks in the 21-19, 21-18 win would come in the first set.
Her two blocks in the second couldn’t have come at a better time.
Tied 18-18, Wilkerson smothered a tight set to maintain the lead.
One point later, she snuffed another to give Canada the only match point it would need.
Who was it that buried the next and final point, too? Brandie Wilkerson, getting her hands on yet another and finishing the victory with a swing after a spectacular cover from Nuss to keep the play alive.
Three straight points for Canada. Three straight points for Wilkerson.
“Heartbroken. Very disappointed,” Kloth said. “Excited that I got this opportunity and I got to play with Kristen and that is what I am focusing on. Right now, it is hard to focus on anything other than that (disappointment) but we walked in together, and we are going to walk back out together. I am playing with my best friend, traveling the world with my best friend.
“We do all this together (tears)… I am glad there’s no video.”
Monday presented a sharp change from how these two teams typically play one another. In four previous matchups on the Beach Pro Tour, Wilkerson had just eight total blocks, far below her usual average per set. On Monday alone, she piled up five.
And while it was Wilkerson who dominated at the net, one cannot ignore the masterful defensive performance by Humana-Paredes in the backcourt. Like Wilkerson, Humana-Paredes has been voted by her peers as the best in the world at what she does. The 2019 Defensive Player of the Year played every bit the part, sitting middle, then sitting some more, waiting until the final moment to break for either the line or the angle.
Were they reads? Calls? Both? Who knows?
“It’s a phenomenal Canadian team,” Nuss said. “We play them a lot and they definitely out-played us today.”
Such chemistry and trust on defense is a critical ingredient to the magic that is the 2024 edition of Wilkerson and Humana-Paredes, the final piece of the elite defensive puzzle that coach Marcio Sicoli installed this off-season. They were good in 2023. Excellent, even, winners of three medals and AVP Miami.
Good enough to prove to Sicoli that he could layer onto the defense, scrapping everything from 2023 to reinvent an entirely new team in 2024.
“He said ‘We’re throwing out everything we did last year,’ ” Humana-Paredes said at the beginning of this season. “I feel like we just need to have our foundations laid and move forward and he goes ‘Yes, but we’re doing nothing the same.’
“He told us that we’re adding these new things because you can, and because you’ve shown us you can and because we have the ability to. If they didn’t believe we could, they wouldn’t have asked us to, and we said ‘OK, heck yeah, we’re ready to level up.’ We feel like we’re one of the top teams in the world, we’ve got a couple medals, but we feel like there’s so much more room for us. It was intense.”
The rebuild is paying off.
Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson are now into the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games, the same round where both finished their Tokyo Olympics — Wilkerson with Heather Bansley, Humana-Paredes with Pavan. They will play Spain’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno, who upset Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands earlier on Monday.
“We are treating every game like a tournament, like a whole new tournament,” Wilkerson said. “And now we are on to the next one.”
If there is a single federation that won the day on Monday, it was Spain.
In the second match of the day, veterans Pablo Herrera and Adrian Gavira, in their 10th combined Olympic Games, upset Poland’s Bartosz Losiak and Michal Bryl 23-21, 21-18.
One hour later, Tania Moreno and Daniela Alvarez, Spain’s top team who still have a year of eligibility remaining at TCU, pulled off another upset, this one over Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands 18-21, 21-19, 15-13.
The 22-year-old Spaniards are both making their Olympic debut, and thus far have shined in Paris. A pair of sweeps, over France and Germany, in pool play earned them a bout with Stam and Schoon, a team they hadn’t beaten in four tries. Monday was as good a time as any to pick up their first win.
Now they will play a team they haven’t yet had the opportunity to beat in Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson. Their quarterfinal will be the final match on August 7.
“That’s going to be a tough game too,” Moreno the FIVB. “Now we just have to reset, recover, prepare for the next game and put in everything that we have. It’s a big opportunity that doesn’t always happen, so we’ll just use it to show our best game and fight for the medals — for our team and for Spain.”
Tina Graudina, Anastasija Samoilova (Latvia) def. Cinja Tillmann, Svenja Muller (Germany) 21-13, 17-21, 18-16
Daniela Alvarez, Tania Moreno (Spain) def. Katja Stam, Raisa Schoon (Netherlands) 18-21, 21-19, 15-13
Melissa Humana-Paredes, Brandie Wilkerson (Canada) def. Kristen Nuss, Taryn Kloth (USA) 21-19, 21-18
Ana Patricia Silva, Duda Lisboa (Brazil) vs. Miki Ishii, Akiko Hasegawa (Japan)
All times Paris local, which is 6 hours ahead of Eastern, 9 hours ahead of Pacific:
9 p.m. — Mariafe, Clancy vs. Verge-Depree/Bobner (Switzerland)
10 p.m. — Hughes, Cheng (USA) vs. Huberli, Brunner (Switzerland)
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