In the hands-down marquee matchup of Week 4 in the AVP League, Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss of the Austin Aces renew their red-hot rivalry with Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, representing the Palm Beach Passion.
The League rolls to the Lone Star State for its fourth beach-volleyball rodeo, playing indoors for a second consecutive week, at the 8,700-seat H-E-B Center at Cedar Park in suburban Austin, Texas, on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
Doubleheaders in each session will feature the Aces, Passion, LA Launch and Brooklyn Blaze, the teams that were idle last weekend. The Blaze (1-3) and Launch (1-3) have not played since the opening week in Los Angeles. The Aces (2-2) and Passion (1-3) saw action during the second go-round in South Florida.
A 4-0 weekend by any of the teams would put it in the conversation for one of the four postseason spots and the bonus prize money that goes with it. All eight squads will have played four games (with men's and women's matches in each) at the halfway point in the League after the event in Texas. The New York Nitro are in first place at 7-1, the Miami Mayhem and Dallas Dream are 5-3 and the San Diego Smash are 2-6.
The games will be streamed live on the free Bally Live app and ballylive.com, and the matches will be archived on the AVP's free YouTube channel shortly after they are completed.
The highly anticipating showdown between Kloth and Nuss (2-0 in the League) and Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson (1-1) on Saturday night features two of the world's premier women's pairs. U.S. Olympians and the Manhattan Beach Open champions, TKN (as they are known) are 8-6 all-time against Mel and Brandie, the silver medalists in the Paris Olympics. But the wildly popular Canadian pair has won the last three meetings, including the AVP Huntington Beach final, the Round of 16 in the Olympics and the AVP Chicago title match.
Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson will face another difficult test on Sunday afternoon against the Launch's Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles (1-1), the MBO runners-up. Mel and Brandie are 5-0 all-time against Flint-Scoles, but three of the victories went to a tie-breaking set. Betsi and Julia are matched against up-and-comers Megan Kraft (the NCAA beach player of the year in 2023 and '24) and Terese Cannon of the Blaze on Saturday, while TKN plays Kraft-Cannon (0-2) on Sunday.
Over on the men's side, the only pair with a League "W" is the Blaze's Cody Caldwell and Seain Cook, who swept the U.S. Olympians Chase Budinger and Miles Evans of the Smash after losing to the Nitro's Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander.
This is a weekend to make hay in cattle country for what looks to be an evenly matched group. Looking to get into the victory column are the Passion's Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost, the Aces' Paul Lotman and Billy Allen and the Launch's Tim Bomgren and Troy Field. It does not seem outside the realm of possibility that all of the men's duos might go 1-1.
Cook told us that he learned a valuable lesson about being ready to play 15-point "speed" sets during the League's debut.