NOT THE START WE WERE LOOKING FOR - DOHA E16
March 1, 2024 marked the start of our 2024 Olympic season. Just as soon as Travis Mewhirter wrote a heart-felt, well written novel about us and our journey we ended the first event with a 9thplace. A straight up punch in the face to start the season. As if we needed any more motivation to continue the grind of training and lifting, we acquired even more.
We blew off the dust from our OGIO suitcases and we noticed our packing skills were a little rusty. In 2023, we literally lived out of our suitcases and we were on autopilot to gather and pack all of our belongings for the tournament trips the night before! Update…we had just moved into an apartment on Friday. So exactly one week after we started the moving process, we had to pack up our lives for 10 days on the road. There was so much going on within the last few weeks, in addition to the move, that my mind was everywhere else and I missed the first exit en route to New Orleans. We rolled into the Nuss household and Saint Georgey Nuss dropped us off at the airport for the first event of the year. Ready or not, season was here.
We purposely arrived at the airport early so we could knock a few to-dos off of our list: met with our agents, chatted with our manager, picked out Slunks inspiration from the contest, paid our bills, and we flew off in the skinny metal tube. Our flights were hectic, per usual. The first flight was delayed and the second flight was moved up, we didn’t even know that was possible. This left us no choice but to sprint through the Philadelphia airport. We ran to make the connection, so much sothat our throats felt like they were bleeding. You know that feeling/taste?
Nothing like a 3-hour flight into a 20-minute dead sprint with a bouncing backpack and a rolling suitcase that tried to trip you every 3 strides straight into a 12-hour flight to Doha. We landed at 6 pm Doha time and stayed up until 10 pm and arose at 4:30 am. I got up for the day to have a nice, slow morning with family Facetimes while Kristen caught some more Z’s. Time change and time travel never ceases to amaze me.
In our third international season we had our schedule pretty dialed in with our lifts, training, walking, and resting. The variables that change each tournament include the transportation schedule to and from the venue. The traffic, depending on the timing of the training, for example, I went to schedule the transportation for practice on Monday and I was told that the drive would be under 1 hour. They said it could be 15 minutes or it could be 55 minutes, there was no way to know.
We chose the “better safe than sorry” transportation and had one of the strangest practices with the Lithuanian team. Major kudos to the blocker who was a full-time translator. She translated 3 different languages to explain the drills and got their two coaches, their team, and our team all on the same page. We worked through weird wind, strange drills, and got some much-needed movement for 60 minutes.
*Side note: the team that asks to practice typically has their coach run the practice. We have never had a coach come with us internationally to run a practice so we are usually at the mercy of other teams asking us and then we follow their practice plan. *
After practice I felt like it was time for dinner and bed with the 4:30 am wake up, but it was only lunch time. I was thrilled to have had endless cucumber salads spread throughout the hotel buffet table meanwhile Kristen was storing away the baby bread rolls as if she was about to go into hibernation. We ate nearly the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire trip.
The next two days were very mundane. Movement, rest, training, lift, treatment, eat, sleep. We had already explored a majority of the Doha area so we didn’t do much of anything and we were warned to not draw any attention while here. In complete transparency, both of us were asked what sport we played and where we were from and its crazy to be hesitant to say the United States.
Wednesday morning aka game day for this tournament. The breakfast room suddenly changed and everyone was in game mode. There was much less laughter, happiness, fun, and chats. Both of our tummies were hurting. We thought it was the pre-tournament jitters with it being the first event of the year. We had weeks of training to get ourselves better in small ways and we were about to be tested. We were. We had lots of errors and more errors. It was extremely frustrating because we thought we had made progress in training and then we didn’t execute our other skills. Drew’s wise words: “there is still time and now we know what we need to work on”. We were just punched in the face and we had to find a different perspective to salvage our mental state.
Perspective: What was the worst-case scenario? It wasn’t losing, it wasn’t getting aced 100 times. We still get to play this sport and we were both heathy and strong. Australia had just dropped out of event because one of them is injured. That was devastating.
Growth Mindset: I immediately watched the match that we lost. In complete transparency, I typically sit down and beat myself up and focus on all the bad I did instead of any good plays or growth that had happened. In my head post-match there wasonly memory of the negative. After I rewatched the match, I learned, I found positives, and we would do the same thing either way. We would fall asleep and wake up to do it all over again.
Competition day two, another loss. This time the Brazilians were able to hold on and close out the match and we weren’t. We had chances and decided to beat ourselves, which was the best and the worst. We knew that we had the match within our grasp but frustrated that we had got in our own way. There was only one chance left. Pressure, high pressure. Frustration, lots offrustration. However, we had been in this position of 0-2 in pool play before and we continued to fight. We had NOT calculatedthe points; we don’t look at all the situations to see how we could possibly break pool. We just went out and played.
It was a hard fought, three set battle. We had won in three, but we were both convinced that we were out of the tournament. We thought we had to do very well to move on and after a 20-minute drive back to the hotel shaking with adrenaline we found out we were in.
Another. Battle against the Swiss. We fought back from 14-11 in the third and didn’t give up but it was too late. We didn’t win, but I am proud that we simply did not give up. Kristen’s mindset coming into the event, we could lose all the games and comeback and the world would keep spinning and we would come back to train and get better. The goal is to peak in July. It sucks because we care. We learned. We were punched but we will stand up. We went 1-3 but we saw improvements in the small plays that go unnoticed for those that were not in our training sessions for the last couple weeks.
Mockingbird Cafe
We were out of the tournament which meant time to pack up and find a hotel and find something to do until we fly out on Saturday morning!
Quick scary explore story (seems we have these on the reg): We decided to hit a coffee spot in a Lusail, a city we had not explored yet in Doha, so we ordered an Uber and made the what should have been 20 minute drive. I say should have been because it turned into an hour. Kristen put in the location of the wrong Mockingbird Cafe so we went past the intended city into more of the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere had construction so when our driver pulled over on the side of the interstate we were confused and slightly panicked. He proceeded to tell us construction was blocking the road and this is also when Kristen realized she put in the wrong location. We were quite frankly stuck in the middle of the desert and thinking in the back of our mind how we could easily be taken right now. Later that evening we discussed what we would have done in that scenario. Kristen informed of all the scenarios she was playing out in her head of how we were going to get away from our abductor. We decided we needed to come up with a code red word that meant drop everything and take off running. This is the time of things that we discuss as we make our walks through random streets in the random cities that we compete in. We successfully made it to the quaint and correct mockingbird cafe and went about the rest of our trip and we normally do… thinking the entire time of how much we would rather be playing volleyball.
“Losing is delayed victory” – Anders Mol’s father
By: Taryn Kloth
