Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth: USA beach duo charted own path to Paris - and wear their Olympic dreams on their ankles (literally) 

The ankle bracelets that USA beach volleyball players Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth wear have a date spelled out on them: 11 August 2024.

The date of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 Closing Ceremony.

The bracelets were a birthday gift from Nuss to Kloth two years ago, after the unlikely duo had paired up. But Nuss had a message to go along with the present: "I said, 'By this day we will be gold medalists, [two days] after the beach volleyball final.'

"I didn't want it to just be the Opening Ceremony, because that isn't our goal," she continued. "The bracelets are just a constant reminder that we wear all the time. Just when things are hard at practice or whenever we're just struggling for motivation, you can always look down and see that anklet and be like, 'Oh no, this is all part of the plan, part of the process.'

"We want to bring a medal back for the United States."

The bracelets are where the pair's similarities begin and end. The pair have turned heads around the world as they have made a fast rise on the beach circuit, thanks in part to their height difference: Nuss stands 5-foot-6 and Kloth 6-foot-4.

That vertical variation has made them stand out — and also buoyed them to continue to push forward in their own unique way. They don't mind being different — in stature or in where they come from.

While a majority of the American beach talent comes from the coasts — California or Florida — Nuss grew up in Louisiana and Kloth in South Dakota, both far from beach volleyball havens.

"You don't have to move out to California if you want to be a beach volleyball player," Nuss said in a recent exclusive interview with Olympics.com. "It's really just about growing the sport. And I think that's something that we have shown is possible. You can train in Louisiana and still be one of the top teams in the world.

"We're taking beach volleyball to a place that it may not have been before."

Nuss and Kloth on writing their own script

In the past 20 years, the United States has produced two gold medal-winning women's duos, led by Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jenning's three-peat from 2004 through to 2012. Walsh Jenning's 2016 partner, April Ross, claimed gold at Tokyo 2020 in 2021 with Alix Klineman.

All four women are California products. As are the other top American team in Paris in Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng.

While Nuss has played beach volleyball for going on a decade, Kloth was late to the sport, being convinced to join Nuss on the sand after they competed as indoor teammates at Louisiana State University.

Opting not to move in order to be based and train in Southern California — the usual US playbook — Nuss and Kloth have instead stayed in Louisiana, where they are coached by Drew Hamilton.

"I think for me, changing the script for location is just [that] I wanted to basically show that beach volleyball can be played wherever," Nuss said. "She's from South Dakota and plays beach volleyball. Like, how does that happen? And hopefully that is a thing that continues to grow. And I think broadening that will increase the level of play in the sport."

Regardless of their geography, Nuss and Kloth have built an international CV that has only gotten stronger the past couple of years, including gold at the World Tour Finals in Doha and bronze at last year's world championships.

But the team agrees that it was actually a breakthrough run at the Uberlandia Elite 16 in April of 2023 in Brazil that set them on the course to believing in bigger, greater things.

"I think it was [there] that for both of us, it was like, 'Wow, we we can do this,' " Nuss said. "We can get to the top. And I think we carried [that with us] after winning that gold medal, we carried a lot of confidence with us for the rest of the season."

Nuss and Kloth: "It's more like family"

There are podium dreams for later in the week for Nuss and Kloth, but the two also recall their early days traveling with one another, going from one beach tournament to the next — and spending lots of long days cooped up in hotel rooms.

"We started off our journey and we were like, 'These are business trips. We are not going to have any fun. We're going to sit in the hotel room, we're going to recover, and we're not going to do anything else. We're not going to leave,'" recalled Kloth. "And then we were like, 'Holy crap, we're crazy. We need to go and enjoy these moments — and we can't get this time back and we're all over the world. We might as well enjoy it.'"

What came out of that was a bespoke Instagram account dedicated to their global adventures — in food.

"I used to be an extremely picky eater," Nuss explained. "[This became] a way for us to enjoy, venture out and experience new cuisines or just new things whenever we are traveling across the world."

Their go-to's? Australian breakfast — eggs on sourdough toast, they agree.

Also a small cafe in South Africa for breakfasts ("We went there every day," Kloth said). And a coffee spot in Madrid.

"Specialty coffee," Nuss clarified.

In all seriousness, the culinary adventures have signaled a greater shift as the team has become one of the best in the world: Yes, this is their job. Yes, this is serious business. But it's more than that.

And they appear to have struck the right balance.

"It's a business, but it's your life," Kloth said. "Like, this is what we're doing all the time. So it can't just be like, 'Hey, this is a business decision.' Or like, 'Sorry, it's just business.' No, at this point it really is way more like family. It is really important."