PARIS, France — Taryn Kloth became the first female Olympian in Creighton University history on Saturday night in Paris as she teamed with Kristen Nuss to defeat the Canadian duo of Sophie Burkovec and Heather Bansley in straight sets (21-17, 21-14). The match was held inside Eiffel Tower Stadium, a 14,000-seat Olympic beach volleyball facility located near the base of the world-famous landmark.
Kloth and Nuss scored the first four points of the match and never trailed in the opening set of the best-of-3 match. The Americans used a 4-1 run to pull away after Burkovec and Bansley closed to within one at 14-13, and took advantage of their third set point opportunity to close out the 21-17 victory in the opener.
After falling behind 5-4 in the second set, Kloth and Nuss uncorked a 7-0 run to take control 11-5. Bansley/Burkovec closed within two at 12-10 before Kloth found the back line to flip the momentum. A big block by Kloth to make it 19-14 put the US on the edge of victory, and Nuss finished off the match with a kill.
Kloth had 10 kills in 15 swings, hitting .467 in the victory. She also had three blocks in the contest. Nuss owned 14 kills and 17 digs while serving Team TKN’s lone ace. Team Canada finished with 16 total kills but also had 14 attack errors and hit just .042 in 48 swings. The Canadians recorded one block on the evening.
Ranked second in the world, Kloth and Nuss were making their Olympic debuts. Their Canadian opposition was 22nd in the latest world rankings and featured Burkovec, who teamed with Brandie Wilkerson to win a silver medal at the 2022 World Championships. Burkovec’s veteran teammate Bansley is now a three-time Olympian who had started a coaching career before coming out of retirement last summer to pair with Burkovec and eventually become the last team to qualify for the Olympics. Bansley is a three-time recipient of the FIVB’s Best Defensive Player award.
Kloth is the seventh former Creighton student-athlete to appear in an Olympics, and first female. Along with Duncan McGuire of the U.S. Olympic Men’s Soccer team, Kloth gives Creighton two competitors at the same Olympics for the first time since 1936, when Willard Schmidt (Basketball) and Carl Vincequerra (Boxing) did so. Other previous Olympians include Scott Servais (1988 Baseball), Chad McConnell (1992 Baseball) and Gregory Echenique (2016 Basketball for Venezuela). Schmidt and Servais are the only two Bluejays to earn a medal, with each man taking home a gold medal.
Kloth played indoor volleyball at Creighton from 2015-18, where she was a two-time AVCA Honorable Mention All-American and MVP of the 2017 BIG EAST Tournament. She remains fourth in program history with 1,427 career kills. The Sioux Falls, S.D. native was just as accomplished in the classroom, where the Finance major was named BIG EAST Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year and won the BIG EAST Institutional Female Scholar-Athlete Award, BIG EAST Sport Excellence Award and BIG EAST Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award in addition to being a College Sports Communicators Third Team Academic All-American. After earning her undergraduate degree at Creighton in the fall of 2018, Kloth transferred to LSU where she began playing beach volleyball for the first time. After going 14-0 in the COVID-abbreviated spring of 2020, she paired with Nuss for the 2021 season as the duo went 36-0 and was named National Pair of the Year by the AVCA and Volleyball Magazine.
The competition formula for beach volleyball at the Paris Games features 24 teams split into six pools. The first round of the tournament will be completed after teams face each of their three pool opponents once. At the end of pool play, the six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the two best-ranked third-placed teams will qualify directly to the Round of 16, occupying 14 of the 16 spots available. The remaining four third-placed teams will play a “lucky loser” round, composed of two matches, from where the last two teams to play in the Round of 16 will emerge. Starting at this round and continuing through the quarterfinals, semifinals and medal matches, the men’s and women’s tournaments will progress in a single-elimination format.
Kloth and Nuss return to the court on Monday at 3 pm Central with a match against the Australian duo of Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy that ranks 21st in the world. Monday’s contest will be broadcast on NBC as well as Peacock. Kloth/Nuss are 7-4 against that tandem all-time. Mariafe/Clancy upset the 10th-ranked Chinese pair of Chen Xue and Xinyi Xia (22-20, 14-21, 16-14) earlier on Saturday.
