The LSU beach volleyball team might have an unbeatable pair this season.
The elite senior pair of Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth can dig, spike and block like no other. They already won the AVCA National Beach Pair of the week this season. They will continue to try to outpace other teams for the remainder of the season.
They have both won AVCA National Beach Pair before, but with other partners. Nuss won with Claire Coppola in 2018, becoming LSU’s first pair to win the award. They won it again in 2019. Kloth and Kelli Greene-Agnew won last season together after being undefeated in Hawaii during the opening weekend.
“I think it’s quite the honor,” Kloth said. “The bigger thought I guess is probably what we’re working towards and that is winning a national championship.”
According to CBVB.com, Kloth and Nuss are considered the top pair on the top court in the country. They both have a 54.7 MoVR ranking. This is a rating system that relies on probabilities of beating opponents.
Even though the pair is undefeated, they still have many goals to achieve. They always give it their all in every match and set. They want to remain undefeated to help give the LSU team the guarantee they will always bring home a win. As a team, they want to win a national championship and a conference championship.
“A big strength for us as a pair is the trust we have in each other on and off the court,” Nuss said. “We genuinely just trust the other person.”
The pair has a great deal of confidence in each other. They both personally have their own goals they want to work on, but for now, they are happy with the way they have been playing together. The elite pair always hype each other up and give kudos to their strengths both on and off the court.
“We basically have a coach on the court and that is Kristen,” Kloth said. “Her beach volleyball IQ is unbelievable.”
When they first heard Head Coach Russell Brock would put them together as a pair, they were shocked. They had no idea what the lineup would be this year, but Kloth and Nuss will both go and play where they are told to. They played together often during the pandemic and were really successful during that time.
They developed a deep trust already this season from both their time together during the pandemic and constantly playing with each other during practice. Sometimes they ask each other where they should be on the court, but the other always responds by moving to where the other is not.
This intuition is what separates them from most pairs. They don’t have to worry about being in a certain part of the court. Instead, they will just adjust to their partner.
“It is kind of like an understood language, like, ‘oh this is my ball,’” Nuss said. “We may not even be communicating all the time on the court, but we are sort of communicating.”