U.S. women’s volleyball team is ranked No. 1 and setting sights on Olympic gold

The U.S. national women’s volleyball team, ranked No. 1 in the world, faced No. 11 Germany on Friday night at Long Beach State in the first of three FIVB World Grand Prix matches the team will play there this weekend.

The Americans beat the Germans, 3-1. And while a Grand Prix win would give the team its fifth gold in six tournaments, greater history could be made when the U.S. competes to claim its first-ever Olympic gold medal in indoor women’s volleyball this summer.

The squad, which trains in Anaheim, won’t play on U.S. soil again until well after the Olympics. The U.S. came close to gold in the 2008 and 2012 Games but had to settle for silver, falling both times to 2016 host Brazil.

Since then, the Americans have overtaken Brazil in the FIVB world rankings.

Brazil now sits at No. 3, behind both the U.S. and No. 2 China, whom the U.S. lost to 3-1 in the first round of Grand Prix play in Ningbo, China, a week ago.

The loss to China put the U.S. at fourth place in the Grand Prix — the top five teams in the tournament will go on to the final round in Thailand from July 6 to 10.

Perhaps more notably, the defeat broke a 12-match winning streak for Team USA. “There’s no way one team can always beat the other [when we play China]. We’re both too good,” U.S. coach Karch Kiraly said. “We’ll get another chance at them.”

The Americans appear well-positioned to finally take home the Olympic gold, as they have dominated opponents in the years since the London Games despite significant turnover on the roster.

Only four of the players on the 14-player Grand Prix roster — which must be cut to 12 for the Olympics — were on the 2012 Olympic team.

There was also a change at head coach, as Kiraly took over from Hugh McCutcheon, who now coaches at the University of Minnesota.

Kiraly served as an assistant coach for McCutcheon and is regarded as one of the best volleyball players of all time; he was the first athlete to win an Olympic gold in both beach and indoor volleyball.

Nevertheless, the U.S. won roughly 80% of its matches over the course of 2013 and 2014, years highlighted by the country’s first-ever World Championship title along with three golds and three silvers at other tournaments.

The team built on that success even more in 2015, going 41-6 overall with four gold medals in five tournaments. The one exception was a bronze at the FIVB World Cup, which offered the top two finishers a spot in the Rio Olympics.

As a result, Team USA had to wait until the NORCECA Olympic Qualification Tournament in 2016 to secure its path to the Games, but it did so with ease, sweeping Canada, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for a first-place finish.

But the U.S. players can’t look ahead to a potentially historic run in Rio just yet — they play No. 5 Japan and No. 10 Turkey on Saturday and Sunday nights, respectively, in Long Beach.

They’ll then play three more preliminary matches before the Grand Prix Final Round — if they qualify — and the Pan American Cup in July.