Top Team Tightens Its Grip

Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh have grown accustomed to the term dominant. It has followed them around for the last four years of their beach volleyball careers.

Lately the dominance of the 2004 Olympic gold medalists has come into question, thanks mostly to the emergence of Elaine Youngs and Rachel Wacholder as challengers and rivals.

On Sunday, however, May-Treanor and Walsh reestablished their perch overlooking their sport with a 21-16, 21-19 victory over Youngs and Wacholder in the final of the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals Hermosa Beach Open.

It was the second consecutive AVP victory and third overall including an international tournament for May-Treanor and Walsh, who had a 50-match win streak end with a loss to Youngs and Wacholder July 2 in Cincinnati.

“We expect great things from ourselves,” Walsh said. “I think that we both work very hard and we’re both very confident and we both know we can beat any team on the other side of the net as long as we take care of our business.”

During the tournament, May-Treanor and Walsh looked much like the team that put together an 89-match win streak in 2003-04. They lost only one game in six matches and needed 40 minutes or less to win three of them.

Youngs and Wacholder forged a 15-11 lead in the second game of the final, but May-Treanor and Walsh found a new level and scored eight of the next nine points for a 19-16 lead before closing out the match on a Walsh kill off Youngs’ fingertips.

“Our confidence was building from the beginning of this tournament to the end,” Walsh said. “We played well against the great teams and it felt good all weekend long.”

For Wacholder and Youngs, it’s back to the drawing board. They used a solid game plan in the victory at Cincinnati and again in a near-victory the following week at Belmar, N.J., but Sunday’s result indicated that there was still a long way to go to become consistent challengers.

They hit balls into the net and out of bounds at crucial times and were plagued by poor passing throughout the match.

“We gave up a really good opportunity there,” Wacholder said of losing the 15-11 lead in Game 2. “I didn’t take care of my stuff and against them, you can’t give them freebies.”

Youngs said one loss won’t hurt the confidence of the team. She said it was just a bad match for her team against a very good team.

“They played better when it mattered,” Youngs said. “When it counted, they made some plays. But you know, they’re mortal. We’re putting pressure on them. I just think that they played good, they didn’t play phenomenal, but we can play a lot better.”