Surely the momentum would slow. Had to slow. The pace that had been set by Evan Cory and Cody Caldwell and Molly Shaw and Toni Rodriguez was unsustainable, was it not?
In one single event – the Haikou Challenge November 12-17 – both teams not only qualified but marched all the way to the finals. Cory and Caldwell won gold, stunning top-seeded Australians and 2024 Olympians Zach Schubert and Thomas Hodges, 23-21, 23-21.
“You love Fall Challenges,” I texted both to Cory and Shaw.
Success this time of year is not unfamiliar to either American defender. In the Fall of 2022, Cory and Logan Webber made it to the semifinals from the qualifier in Dubai. One week later, Shaw took silver in the second Dubai Challenge with Maddie Anderson, a precocious talent who was then still playing for Florida State.
Both laughed at the message. While most in the beach volleyball world are beginning to wind down when the calendars flip to November, those two – and USA Volleyball as a whole, it seems – are only beginning to get started.
“My bread and butter,” Shaw replied with a laughing emoji.
She may have been laughing then, though the following two weeks would prove it to be no joke.
The next week, the Beach Pro Tour hit Chennai, the sixth-most populous city in India, known to players on tour as one of the toughest places to play for its suffocating heat and mind-melting humidity. Jet-lagged and on little rest, Shaw and Rodriguez and Cory and Caldwell qualified yet again. Shaw and Rodriguez would go on to win their next three matches, pushing their way back into the semifinals. Cory and Caldwell narrowly broke pool, then won an even narrower first-round match, coming back from down 8-11 to win the third set. It was an affair so hot and exhausting that Caldwell, after blocking the final ball for match point, stumbled backwards, collapsed, and simply lay there for a good three minutes, shaking hands while faceplanted in the sand. Cory posted the video on his Instagram, which is perhaps the most must-watch video of the entire season.
That, to nobody’s surprise, was all the farther they’d make it, bowing out in seventh – still the third-highest finish in Cory’s international career, and the No. 2 for Caldwell, behind only Haikou. Shaw and Rodriguez, meanwhile, would finish with a bronze, upsetting Lithuanian Olympians Monika Paulikiene and Aine Raupelyte, 21-11, 20-22, 15-8. Adding to the USA medal count, like some sort of late Fall Olympic Games, were Hailey Harward and Kylie DeBerg, who joined them on the podium donning silver. Two places back, in fifth, were Anderson and Brook Bauer, notching a career-high for Bauer and No. 2 for Anderson.
“Maybe we have more success because we finally have the full time to get to a place and adjust to the time zone instead of rushing from an AVP?” Shaw said afterwards, even herself a bit curious and bemused by the American success. “And using only one ball? Man, I don’t know.”
The podium at the Nuvali Challenge/Volleyball World photo
Here it must be said, for transparency’s sake and also for the sake of legitimacy: The fields are notably, undeniably lighter in the fall. This goes for Elite16 and Challenge events. The vast majority of the top teams in the world – Duda and Ana Patricia, Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller, Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Nina Brunner and Tanja Huberli, Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy, the list goes on – have either only made a cameo appearance or no appearances at all since the Olympic Games. This has created a void that has resulted in career high after career high at all levels, from all countries. Kim Hildreth and Teegan Van Gunst had never won an Elite16 main draw match prior to the Joao Pessoa Elite16 – and then they won four straight and capped it with a bronze medal, beating, guess who, an American team also out of the qualifier in Lexy Denaburg and Deahna Kraft, who had never so much as played in an Elite16, much less made a main draw. Germans Sandra Ittlinger and Kim Van de Velde have been on a similar tour de force, claiming two top-five finishes in back-to-back Elite16s in Joao Pessoa and Rio de Janeiro. They finished their fall with a bronze in last weekend’s final Challenge event in Nuvali, Philippines.
On the men’s side, the final three Challenges, and the final Elite16, were won by teams out of the qualifier who had never before medaled at those respective levels. England’s Javier Bello and Joaquin Bello stunned the world with their gold in Rio, in which they toppled mighty Anders Mol and Christian Sorum in the semifinals and met an unlikely pair in the finals in Argentina’s Nico Capogrosso and Tomas Capogrosso.
Rio marked career-high finishes for both.
In India and the Philippines, Sweden’s next pair of absurdly talented teenagers, Elmer Andersson and Jacob Nilsson, won back-to-back golds, beginning both events in the qualifier. In Nuvali, they met another qualifier team in the finals in Germans Paul Henning and Lui Wust, the latter of whom had never so much as made a semifinal, much less a final.
Nuvali marked the first time in the Elite16, Challenge, Futures era that both the men’s and women’s finals were contested between a pair of qualifier teams. Shaw and Rodriguez somehow mustered whatever strength was left in their legs to sweep five straight opponents to make yet another final – and then come back after a 17-21 second-set loss to the Netherlands’ and now University of Texas’ Brecht Piersma and Noa Sonneville to win, 15-10, in the third.
“We all know it’s gonna be a grind and that we have to really just push hard for a couple more weeks and then we get off season,” said Rodriguez, who has an argument for the best fall of any player in the world, with an AVP League Championship and three straight Challenge medals to her name. “It’s been fun to be back on the world tour playing against all these amazing teams. It’s just been cool to see how fast our team has come together.”
This will be an off-season most well-deserved for Shaw and Rodriguez, and the USA as a whole. Six total medals since the month of October will be coming home, with five of them beginning in the qualifier.
“I’m really overwhelmed,” Shaw said. “I love medals and hate losing.”
With four medals in hand in four events – Shaw also won a gold at a Futures in Tahiti in April with rookie Chloe Loreen – and a 21-2 record on the Beach Pro Tour this season, it seems Shaw will go into this off-season fully at peace, and with three new decorations to hang on the Christmas tree this year.
