Did Kylie DeBerg belong in the world of professional beach volleyball?
It’s possible that question sounds ridiculous to you, especially given her recent success, winning a gold medal – her first – at the Xiamen Challenge with Toni Rodriguez on Sunday, beating Finland’s Taru Lahti and Niina Ahtiainen (13-21, 21-13, 15-9) in the finals.
Even discounting that recency bias, however, here is a 6-foot-4 women’s blocker who, in her lone year playing NCAA beach volleyball at LSU, went straight to court two, promptly won 33 matches, and helped the Tigers to a then-school record 32 wins in a season. Comparisons were inevitably drawn to Taryn Kloth, another 6-foot-4 indoor standout who transferred to LSU and enjoyed abundant success before enjoying the same professionally.
Not all paths to the podium, however, are quite as linear as Kloth’s. There were smatterings of significant successes, notable signs that DeBerg was progressing just fine on the sand: a win in Waupaca with Alaina Chacon followed by a seventh at the Manhattan Beach Open. A bronze medal at the Halifax Futures with Carli Lloyd, a fifth in AVP Huntington Beach with Hailey Harward.
But success in the U.S. and in Futures is one matter. Succeeding at the highest level is another. There’s an adjustment period, a breaking through of a plateau that can oftentimes break a player in the process.
DeBerg and Harward hit theirs. During a string of five Beach Pro Tour tournaments from April through November of 2024, DeBerg and Harward made just two main draws, both, funny enough, in China.
And then: Breakthrough.
A silver medal at the Chennai Challenge was followed by a seventh at the Nuvali Challenge. Suddenly, DeBerg was very much on the radar of every American defender.
Oddly enough, it was a blocker who gave her the most convincing call.
Toni Rodriguez had already enjoyed her breakout moment. After failing to qualify in back-to-back events in Brazil in March of 2024, Rodriguez took a break from international play, waiting until the less crowded fall events to make her return to the Beach Pro Tour. She did so with Molly Shaw, and she did so with fireworks and national anthems and much to celebrate. Three straight medals were included in that stretch, all out of the qualifier, one of every color, punctuated with a gold in Nuvali.
Then she switched positions.
Shaw was picked up by Kelly Cheng, which left Rodriguez searching for a partner. Intrigued by the possibility of her playing defense, she called DeBerg, her former teammate at LSU. Both had points on the Beach Pro Tour, enough to be straight into the main draw of Challenges and Elites. Both had proven they could medal at the highest level.
Now they just had to prove they could do it together.
It began auspiciously enough, a fifth at the season-opening Yucatan Challenge in which they beat Savvy Simo and Abby Van Winkle, French Olympians Lezanna Placette and Alexia Richard, Julia Donlin and Lexy Denaburg, and pushed eventual champs Valentina Gottardi and Claudia Scampoli to three.
Then, however, came six straight losses, three consecutive last place finishes.
The questions began.
“A lot of doubts from in the recent past and last year on if I belong or not out here with everyone and if I could be good enough,” DeBerg said from Xiamen. “And I know wins don’t always have to be there prove it but just helps the confidence a little bit.”
Breakthroughs happen at the strangest of times. Take, for example, this week in China. DeBerg and Rodriguez were coming off a weekend in which they played with other partners at AVP Huntington Beach. They traveled across the globe, made the most difficult time switch – and promptly won their first gold medal as a team, on the heels of the three worst tournaments of their partnership.
How does that happen?
“After our fifth in Mexico, we definitely got in a little bit of a rut,” Rodriguez said. “One of our main goals this tournament was to be the best teammates we could be for each other and have fun. I thought Kylie did an amazing job with her communication, leadership, and being a straight beast throughout the tournament. And I think we had a lot of fun out there.”
Whatever the intangibles may have been, the measurables were notably improved. DeBerg’s 32 blocks doubled that of opposing blockers. As a team, they sided out 64%, and in transition 45%, seven and six percentage points higher than their opponents in Xiamen. They hit just 64 errors compared to 74.
They were, in every respect, statistically superior to their previous selves all season. Rodriguez’s sideout percentage in Xiamen was 9 percentage points higher, DeBerg’s 6. Their defense, which had allowed a 61% sideout in 2025, was stouter.
It’s easy to have fun when all of that is coinciding.
“We are stoked to keep growing and learning,” Rodriguez said.
Savvy Simo and Abby Van Winkle also enjoyed a successful tournament, finishing fourth out of the qualifier, picking up 680 points and $7,000 as a team. Lexy Denaburg and Julia Donlin finished fifth, while Xolani Hodel and Deahna Kraft took ninth, alongside Brook Bauer and Maddie Anderson.
