Olivia Dunne may not be on Team USA, but the popular LSU gymnast will definitely be attending the upcoming Paris Olympics.
Instagram influencer and girlfriend of Pittsburgh Pirates star Paul Skenes filmed herself at Saturday’s beach volleyball match: Sophie Bukovec and Heather Bansley of Team Canada against Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss of Team USA.
And to Dunne’s delight, it was his LSU Tigers teammates Kloth and Nuss who emerged victorious: 21-17, 21-14.
‘Geaux Tigers & Geaux US’ read a caption on LSU’s Instagram page alongside a photo of Dunne, Nuss and Kloth making the school’s ‘L’ hand gesture.
Dunne also took to Instagram to photograph herself at the game, showing off Paris’ sparkling Eiffel Tower in the background.
Unlike generations of Californians who grew up playing volleyball on local beaches as kids, Kloth and teammate Kristen Nuss came late to the sandy side of the sport. After teaming up at LSU, they stayed in Louisiana and trained in Nuss’s hometown of New Orleans.
Dunne took to Instagram to take to the photo with Paris’ sparkling Eiffel Tower in the background.
Former LSU Tigers players Kristen Nuss (left), Olivia Dunne (center) and Taryn Kloth (right)
And when the world’s second-ranked team made its debut with a 21-17, 21-14 victory over Canada at the Eiffel Tower Stadium in Paris on Saturday night, it became the first American beach volleyball pair to seek Olympic gold without any connection to the Golden State.
“We kind of said we wanted to rewrite the script and change it up,” Nuss said in a recent phone interview before the two left for Paris. “You had to move to California. You had to live in California to be successful in this sport. And I feel like we really did a good job of changing that up.”
Beach volleyball was created and made in California, with its miles of sandy coastline and a climate that allows athletes to play year-round.
Kloth played indoor volleyball at Creighton in Omaha, Nebraska (another city without a beach) and came to LSU ready to learn and needing to. Her only experience with the beach game was playing catch with friends at a lake in South Dakota.
Kloth, right, and Nuss, left, celebrate victory in the women’s beach volleyball group B match
“I wouldn’t even call it a beach, I’d call it dirt,” he said. “It was like cement with a little bit of dust on top, and we played volleyball inside.”
Kloth mastered the beach game quickly enough that in her first full season at LSU, 2020, she was 27-0 with two different teammates. As a sophomore, she and Nuss teamed up for a 36-0 record, including two wins in two games against UCLA and top-ranked USC.
And by the time she earned her degree, Kloth had also acquired enough of a support system to want to stay.
“I was thrown into a very different culture,” she said. “And they were very kind to welcome me and to know that I didn’t have a family here like probably everyone else did.”
