Alexis Durish and Audrey Koenig are nice young women.
Promise.
They are also elite beach volleyball players.
The latter won out over the former on Thursday in Switzerland, as Koenig and Durish bullied their way into the main draw of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Geneva Futures, sweeping a pair of Swiss teams 21-7, 21-12, then 21-13, 21-9. Neither match even took half an hour.
It is the first Beach Pro Tour event for either of Florida State’s top pair, though it is not their first time representing USA Volleyball. They’re coming off a gold medal at a NORCECA in the Cayman Islands, in which they didn’t drop a single set. Prior to that, they clinched the bid to represent the U.S. at the World University Games in Germany later this summer. Even then, against the top NCAA players in the USA Volleyball pipeline, they didn’t drop a single set in the two-day qualifying tournament.
Thus far, then, it has been the summer of Koenig, Florida State’s No. 1 blocker, and Durish, the Seminoles’ court one defender, both of whom finished 2025 as All-Americans.
Fellow Seminole Avery Poppinga and Megan Gebhard also qualified for the main draw, winning their only match, against Hungary, and former UCLA star Natalie Myszkowski and former Stanford standout Taylor Wilson also made the main draw, winning their lone qualifier match against Germany.
Early success for USA Volleyball at Stare Jablonki Challenge
There has been American success elsewhere in Europe, too. The Stare Jablonki Challenge began on Wednesday, where Chase Budinger and Miles Evans brawled their way through another qualifier, making the main draw with a win over Norway’s Even Aas and Nils Ringoen (23-21, 26-28, 15-8). They followed up well, sweeping Germany’s Philipp Huster and and Max Just, 21-16, 21-18, to move on from pool play. Whether they earn a first round bye will be determined by their second-round matchup on Friday against Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov and Eduard Reznik.
Stare Jablonki, one of the most popular stops on the Beach Pro Tour, is the fourth straight qualifier success for Budinger and Evans, who have successfully navigated qualifiers in Saquarema, Brasilia, Alanya, and now Poland. They are coming off consecutive fifth-place finishes, at Challenges in Xiamen and Alanya, boosting their World Championships standing.
Savvy Simo and Abby Van Winkle remained hot as well, winning both pool play matches in Stare Jablonki, over the Netherlands’ Mila Konink and Raisa Schoon (21-18, 21-11) and Japan’s Reika Murakami and Asami Shiba (21-13, 21-19). It will be another big opportunity for the No. 19 seed, who still have an outside shot at making the World Championships in Adelaide later this year, with a fourth and a ninth on the ledger. They are one of two USA Volleyball teams to earn a first round bye, the other being Kim Hildreth and Teegan Van Gunst, who beat Brazil’s Taina Silva and Andressa Cavalcanti (18-21, 21-11, 15-12) and Australia’s Georgia Johnson and Elizabeth Alchin (21-15, 17-21, 18-16). Hildreth and Van Gunst, too, are in the fight for that final USA spot at the World Champs, and are guaranteed their second top-10 finish of the season.
Two other USA Volleyball teams — Corinne Quiggle and Megan Rice, Lexy Denaburg and Julia Donlin — split in pool play and will begin playoffs in the first round. Hailey Harward and Molly Phillips are the only USA Volleyball pair not to break pool, dropping both.
