TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Just how good are Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa?
By many accounts, the 2024 Beach Pro Tour season was the worst of their partnership. In some cases, it marked the low point of their careers.
The two medals they won? That’s Duda’s fewest since 2015, when she was just 17 years old and played in only in three events.
The $31,000 in prize money they earned? Lowest of either players’ professional career.
Their 78% winning percentage? Worst of their three-year partnership.
A three-month stretch spanning from May-July without a single medal? Longest such span of their partnership.
And yet — and yet… they are still considered by their peers, with an overwhelming majority, as the best team in the world, and the 2024 Beach Pro Tour Team of the Year.
How, given the aforementioned numbers, is that possible?
Because an “off” year for Ana Patricia and Duda is still a staggeringly successful one for any pair not named Ana Patricia and Duda.
This is the price of being the best: Anything but gold is a disappointment, any loss cause for sounding the alarm.
But at the Paris Olympic Games, the sport’s most important event, where legacies are cemented, Duda and Ana Patricia shined. One team after another was bullied by eye-opening margins. They won the second set of their quarterfinal, over current world No. 1 Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova, by 11. Twice, in the semifinals and gold medal match, they responded from dropping a set to win in three, over Australia’s Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy and Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson.
When it was all said and done, they won seven consecutive matches and brought home Brazil’s first female Olympic gold since Jackie Silva and Sandra Pires in 1996 — before either were born.
In the end, the teams who are remembered, the teams who are bestowed awards such as Team of the Year, are the ones who win the biggies, the majors, the events on the grandest of stages.
Duda and Ana Patricia reserved their best for when it was most needed, and with an Olympic gold in hand, they are the 2024 Team of the Year.
MVP: Duda Lisboa
Honorable mention:
-
Nina Brunner
-
Brandie Wilkerson
-
Ana Patricia Silva
-
Cinja Tillmann
This was, like many categories, close to the point of being decided by less than a handful of votes. While the gap may be narrowing between Duda Lisboa and everyone else, the 26-year-old is still queen of the beach volleyball world, and the 2024 MVP of the Beach Pro Tour.
Duda is as well-rounded of a player as there can be in beach volleyball, nominated for Best Defensive and Best Offensive and a former winner of Server of the Year. Tangibly, she has every measurable a beach volleyball player could want. Intangibly, she has an ability not unlike Anders Mol on the men’s side to simply take over matches like nobody else can. Her consistency to play at the highest level of her game, on a daily basis, is one of the many traits that make her such a distinguished player, and already one of the best of all-time.
Best Defensive Player: Kristen Nuss
Honorable mention:
-
Nina Brunner
-
Duda Lisboa
-
Melissa Humana-Paredes
You hardly even need to look at the statistics to know who finished No. 1 in total digs. The answer is, nearly invariably, Kristen Nuss. Standing just 5-foot-6, it is, of course, somewhat mandatory for her to possess a defensive prowess the likes the world hasn’t seen in quite some time, but her ability to deliver on such a consistent basis is what has earned her, for the second straight year, the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year.
Kristen Nuss is your Defensive Player of the Year
Best Offensive Player: Duda Lisboa
Honorable mention:
-
Ana Patricia Silva
-
Brandie Wilkerson
-
Valentina Gottardi
Rich Lambourne, the tremendous and deadpanned commentator for Volleyball TV, once coined Duda Lisboa and Ana Patricia Silva the “tortured geniuses” of the beach volleyball world because, at times, they’re so good they look sort of…bored. True to form, for the second straight year, Duda and Ana Patricia were No. 1 and No. 2 in voting for Offensive Player of the Year, only this time it’s Duda, the MVP, taking home the honors. On the season, Duda sided out 65% and hit 54% in transition. As for the tortured genius bit? When Duda swung instead of shot, her percentage jumped up three points in side out and a staggering 17% in transition. She can, essentially, side out whenever she wants — as can her partner — it’s just a matter of how she wants to deliver the killing blow.
Duda is your Offensive Player of the Year
Best Blocker: Brandie Wilkerson
Honorable mention:
-
Ana Patricia
-
Tanja Huberli
-
Taryn Kloth
-
Valentina Gottardi
There is one particular block that says nearly everything you need to know about how ridiculous Brandie Wilkerson is at the net. In the first round of pool play at the Beach Pro Tour Finals, against Germany’s Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller, Wilkerson roofed Muller so straight down that the ball actually landed on Wilkerson’s own side of the net. When she looked back at her partner, Melissa Humana-Paredes, the defender recoiled and said, with a shudder: “That’s disgusting.”
In athletics, there are certain terms and phrases that are genuine compliments that, in any other version of life, would be quite insulting. Calling someone a freak, for example, is the highest of compliments in an athletic sense and, well, not so much in an everyday sense. Same goes for disgusting. Wilkerson, because of her freakish athletic ability, as well as savvy hand-work, a combination that oftentimes results in “disgusting” blocks, is, for the second straight year, and again by a massive majority, the 2024 Blocker of the Year.
Brandie Wilkerson is the 2024 Blocker of the Year
Best Server: Esmee Bobner
Honorable mention:
-
Brandie Wilkerson
-
Valentina Gottardi
-
Louisa Lippmann
It was early in the season, and Esmee Bobner, part of one of the season’s most delightful storylines with Zoe Verge-Depre, was piling up yet another mountain of aces. Someone on Instagram commented that her name was no longer Esmee, but Acemee.
It stuck.
As did Bobner’s serving.
How good was her serving? Good enough to help propel her and Verge-Depre not just to an Olympic berth, but a fifth-place finish at the Paris Olympic Games and, the next week, a bronze medal at the European Championships.
The bad news for the beach volleyball world is that Bobner, at just 25 years old, is retiring. The good news for everyone else? You no longer have to worry about Acemee Bobner, the 2024 Server of the Year.
Esmee Bobner is the 2024 Server of the Year
Most Improved: Zoe Verge-Depre
Honorable mention
-
Megan Kraft
-
Valentina Gottardi
-
Daniela Alvarez
There is a point where a player transitions from the plucky underdog into a bona fide threat on the Elite16 stage. Nobody in 2024 exemplifies that more than Zoe Verge-Depre who, alongside 2024 Server of the Year Esmee Bobner, put together the most fascinating run of these Paris Olympic Games. The youngsters sustained their ability to have one career-high after the next, winning gold in Guadalajara and bronze one month later out of the qualifier at the Brasilia Elite16. As for Verge-Depre individually, she sided out at 68%, put away 59% of her transition opportunities, limited her errors (she hit just 242 on the season) and was dangerous both at the service line and in defense. What did that earn her? A partnership with older sister Anouk heading into 2025, and the Most Improved Player of 2024.
Zoe Verge-Depre is the 2024 Most Improved Player.
Rookie of the Year: Megan Kraft
Honorable mention:
-
Giada Bianchi
-
Reka Orsi Toth
-
Lexy Denaburg
It’s still wild to think that, just seven months ago, Megan Kraft was competing in the NCAA and wasn’t yet a full-time professional beach volleyball player. Now? She’s won four consecutive medals on the Beach Pro Tour with Terese Cannon, including back-to-back silvers in Rio de Janeiro and the Doha Beach Pro Tour Finals. All this, and she’s new to defense, having just begun playing full-time defense when her and Cannon began their partnership last October. Not only is she the brightest amongst a talented 2024 rookie class — Kraft is one of the brightest talents in the beach volleyball world.
Megan Kraft is the 2024 Rookie of the Year
Sportswoman of the Year: Laura Ludwig
Honorable mention:
-
Melissa Humana-Paredes
-
Nina Brunner
-
Anouk Verge-Depre
It couldn’t be more fitting to bestow one final honor upon one of the game’s greats than for Laura Ludwig to be named the 2024 Sportswoman of the Year. The five-time Olympian called it a brilliant career this year, retiring at home at the Hamburg Elite16 to one deserved ovation after the next — flowers, tears, videos, victory laps. The 38-year-old mother of two is unanimously beloved, both by fans and players alike, and her smile, her enthusiastic hellos, her warm demeanor both on and off the court, will be missed.
Cheers to Laura Ludwig, the 2024 Sportswoman of the Year, and one of the finest women beach volleyball has known.
Laura Ludwig is the 2024 Sportswoman of the Year.
Event of the Year: Paris Olympic Games
Honorable mention
-
Gstaad Elite16
-
Brasilia Elite16
-
Vienna Elite16
With all due respect to the three deserved honorable mention nominees, no event stood a chance against this year’s Paris Olympic Games.
What. A. Venue.
Right at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in a 12,000-seat stadium that was sold out for nearly every match, this year’s Olympic Games may go down as the best venue ever?
To me, it is.
To the players, well, the votes speak for themselves: The 2024 Paris Olympic Games are the Event of the Year.
A venue like no other.
