There were no fireworks this time for Alexis Durish and Audrey Koenig. No six-point run to close a stunning semifinal upset over No. 1 seed Sara Hughes and Ally Batenhorst. No disbelief at the end, even if it all still “felt surreal” to Koenig in the moments after.
Compared to their epic semifinal win, Durish and Koenig’s drama-free finals match at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Bhubaneswar Challenge, a 21-18, 21-16 victory over Japan’s Asami Shiba and Reika Murakami, was quite demure. Controlled from start to finish, Durish and Koenig never blinked, this despite playing not only in their first Challenge gold medal match — but the first Challenge of their careers.
They edged Japan in every single statistical category, as Koenig doubled up on Japan’s blocks, they doubled up on Japan’s aces, and hit three fewer errors against a pair known mostly for hitting hardly any errors. When the final point landed, a Koenig swing into the angle, their reaction was hardly any different than another one of their wins at Florida State.
This is, simply, what they do.
It’s possible the equanimity they showed in the semifinals and finals will surprise some. Durish and Koenig have only played a single AVP event together — they finished ninth in Palm Beach last summer — and their international experience includes a pair of Futures — gold in Geneva, bronze in Montpellier — a NORCECA — gold in the Cayman Islands — and the FISU World University Games — bronze in Dusseldorf. They won medals in all, sure, but the gap between Futures and Challenges can often be a wide one.
Those in Tallahassee, Florida, where Durish and Koenig anchor court one for Florida State, will not be surprised.
Durish and Koenig were first-team All-Americans a year ago, and are currently undefeated and the Big 12 Pair of the Week. They headline the No. 7 team in the country and will meet the Noles on Tuesday in Deland, Florida, where they play Stetson and Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Quite different than, say, the team who won bronze: Sara Hughes and Ally Batenhorst.
Megan Kraft swings against Ally Batenhorst at the Newport Elite/Any J. Gordon photo
Sara Hughes, Ally Batenhorst win first medal as a team
The No. 1-seeded USA Volleyball duo collected their first medal as a team, making it bronze with a three-set win over Beach Pro Tour rookie Natalie Myskowski and veteran Carly Kan, 19-21, 21-15, 15-12. It caps a week of ups-and-downs, as all but one match for Hughes and Batenhorst went the full three sets.
But a medal is a medal, and, watered-down tournament or not, Hughes and Batenhorst still picked up a huge 720 points and $9,000 as a team, further solidifying their position in main draws moving forward.
Where Koenig and Durish will return to NCAA Beach play, Hughes and Batenhorst will make the unenviable travel from India to, briefly, Los Angeles, to Mexico, where they are the No. 6 seed in the Tlaxcala Challenge in two weeks.
Evan Cory, Derek Bradford finish fifth
For the most part, this week in Bhubaneswar was a successful one for Evan Cory and Derek Bradford, USA Volleyball’s top-ranked men’s team heading into the Challenge. Seeded second, they won their first two matches to advance to the quarterfinals before getting handled by Belgium’s Joppe Van Langendonck and Kyan Vercauteren, 21-16, 21-13. By this point, Cory is a veteran, already the owner of a gold on the Beach Pro Tour. Bradford, at just 21 years old, should still be considered a rookie, as Bhubaneswar was just the second Challenge main draw of his career.
Passing and ball control woes plagued the two in the quarterfinals, something that will need to be shored up. But such issues could be expected from a young team, and a young player in Bradford, who is still very much cutting his teeth on the Beach Pro Tour. They picked up 600 valuable points and split $5,000 for the efforts. They’ll next play in Tlaxcala, where they are No. 23 and the only USA Volleyball team directly seeded into the main draw.
Gage Basey, Thomas Hurst fall flat
We’re asked quite a bit about Gage Basey and Thomas Hurst, a young pairing for USA Volleyball who are talented and have shown a decent helping of promise. They won the Virginia Beach Contender event a year ago, took third in Waupaca, and began the 2026 season with a silver medal at the Mount Manganui Challenge in New Zealand. They’re talented, no doubt, and have shown they can win against most of the American men. They’ll have a decent shot at qualifying for the AVP League later this month, but to win on the Beach Pro Tour, they’ll need to play just about perfect to make any kind of impact. They dropped both of their matches in India, to Ukraine and Israel — not bad teams, to be sure — and finished 17th.
Rather than play a light field in Tlaxcala, they’re skipping to hit a Futures in Tahiti during the final weekend of March, which is far from the worst way to spend a weekend in the Spring. They are the No. 3 seed in Tahiti.
