May-Walsh Burying'em in the Sand
by Colleen Kane, Cincinnati Enquirer
June 30, 2005 May and Walsh made their debut as team on the AVP Tour on April 4, 2003, in Fort Lauderdale, and it wasn't until June 6, 2004, that they lost a match. Their winning streak on the AVP Tour reached 64 consecutive matches and 12 consecutive tournaments before losing. Combining their play on the AVP Tour and international FIVB Tour, May and Walsh won 89 straight matches from July 15, 2003, through June 6, 2004. They also won 15 straight tournament titles.
This season, the duo has won all 28 of its matches on the AVP Tour and has claimed all five titles.
They are the winningest tandem in women's beach volleyball history with 37 titles together on both domestic and international circuits.
Winning the Santa Barbara Open last month pushed their team winnings over $1 million, becoming just the second women's team to accomplish the feat.
They won the gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and their second consecutive world title in Berlin last week.
They've been called one of the most dominant duos in sports, and with good reason. For the past few years, Misty May and Kerri Walsh haven't just won, they've buried opponents in the sand they play on.
May and Walsh headline the women's field at the AVP Tour's Cincinnati Open, which begins with today's qualifying round at the Lindner Family Tennis Center. They enter the tournament having won nine consecutive tournaments following their gold-medal win at the Athens Olympics in August.
They have strung together 46 consecutive match wins, more than halfway to their record of 89 consecutive wins, which ended in 2004 only after May strained muscles in her abdomen.
"Nobody in this country is even close them," said the duo's trainer, Mike Rangel. "They've got to play their 'B' game to lose internationally, that's how good they are."
On an AVP Tour, where the men's title is wide open every tournament, May and Walsh have been so strong the question has gone from "Will opponents beat them?" to "Will opponents take a game off them?" In 35 matches this year, they've lost two games. They defended their FIVB World Championships title in Berlin last weekend without losing a game.
"Kerri and Misty have been utterly dominant, and they deserve to be," three-time Olympic gold medalist Karch Kiraly said. "Nobody has been able to do that on the men's side."
Their dominance begs two questions: What makes them so good? And who, if anyone, is going to stop them?
'Rock stars'AVP marketing director Bruce Binkow said they saw it coming.
In the midst of May and Walsh's record-breaking winning streak from 2003-04, they began to realize what this duo could mean for the popularity of beach volleyball.
"We had been working with NBC really closely to feature them well in advance of the Athens Games, so when they got there, America knew who they were," Binkow said.
"They were a golden duo. The ratings went up every time they were on. People might have thought it was just our dumb luck with their sudden rise to fame, but really it was a slow build on our part."
Beach volleyball went from 2 a.m. TV times to one of the highlights of NBC's Olympic coverage. And at the center were May and Walsh, who in the buildup and aftermath have been featured in everything from magazine spreads to a Visa commercial.
"They're great ambassadors of the sport," Rangel said. "They're like rock stars. It's unbelievable when they play on Center Court. I've never seen anything like it, not even with Karch. Nobody's been as popular with the young girls like they are."
Beach volleyball player Casey Jennings, Walsh's fiancée, said people were "pretty relentless" about coming up to him and Walsh following the Olympics but that the fan rush has died down a bit.
"We've grown together," Jennings said. "I'm happy just being able to be a part of it and give her my advice, and I've learned from how she deals with the professional side of it."
May and Walsh said the biggest change since the Olympics has been managing their time.
Both are trying to balance volleyball, the corporate world and fan appearances with their relationships (May is married to Florida Marlins catcher Matt Treanor).
"(Life has changed) hugely, as far as our time is at a premium and the corporate world has taken notice," Walsh said.
But the goals haven't changed.
"More of the same," Walsh said. "The potential Misty and I have is unlimited. Personally, I think we can get so much better."
That hunger to excel has been with the duo from the start.
Winning in their bloodWalsh called May "one of my favorite players growing up." May is only one year older than Walsh, but it was apparent early in her career that she was going to be good.
"She's been winning since she was born," Walsh said.
They both have.
May grew up playing beach volleyball with her father, Butch May, a member of the 1968 men's national team. She also played the indoor game and won an NCAA championship at Long Beach State, where she was a three-time All-American and the 1998 NCAA Athlete of the Year.
"I think what makes Misty so great is she was raised around the game. Everything about volleyball is like second nature to her, like breathing and walking," Rangel said.
"Everybody knew Misty was going to be a great beach volleyball player by age 12. We would see her do things and be like, 'Are you kidding me? She's in high school?' Nobody could believe she was that good that young."
Walsh also came from a family of athletes. Her father, Tim, was a minor-league baseball player, and her mother, Margie, was a two-time volleyball MVP at Santa Clara. Walsh grew to be 6 feet 3 and won an NCAA championship at Stanford, where she was a four-time All-American and also received national player of the year honors.
She continued her indoor career on the U.S. national team and at the Sydney Olympics.
While she was helping the U.S. team to a fourth-place finish, May was on the beach, finishing fifth with Holly McPeak. Afterward, both were looking for a change.
In January 2001, they found each other.
The perfect marriage
It didn't take long for the Walsh/May combination to start frustrating opponents.
Walsh is tall and athletic but also "can do everything smaller people can do," May said.
May is a complete player with "an innate sense of the game" and "remarkable" court vision - "strong and savvy and defensively ferocious," Walsh said.
They won their first tournament just more than five months after they started playing together.
"They're such a great combination: Kerri's athleticism and range, Misty's ball control and expertise in the backcourt," said the pair's coach, Dane Selznick. "They have desire and passion and a great relationship with each other on the court. They know how to stay together when things are going wrong. When they give a few points in a game, you rarely see them call timeout because they'll stop it right at that point."
May and Walsh's personalities also seem to complement each other. Friends say May is laid-back, goofy even. Walsh is more intense and sometimes reserved. They are now in their fifth season together, somewhat of an oddity on the current AVP Tour, where players sometimes switch partners multiple times in a season.
"It's their ability to stay together for so long. It's taken a lot of humility on both their parts," Jennings said. "They're constantly trying to better their skills, individually and together."
That close partnership is just one more thing that can intimidate opponents.
"They have this amazing chemistry," said AVP Tour player and UC graduate Denise Johns.
"They never make a mistake. It's like they've been playing 20 years together."
Who's got next?
So the question remains, is the world going to beat Walsh and May any time soon?
Selznick sees one way to overcome a healthy Walsh/May combination: serving well enough to throw the pair off balance. He said the Brazilian duo of Samirames Marins and Tatiana Minello served well in the finals of the San Diego Open, where May and Walsh won 23-21, 21-19, one of their closer matches this year.
The Chinese team of Linjun Ji and Whenhui You also had strong serving, Selznick said, and took May and Walsh to three games in Austin, one of two teams to do that this season.
"They have a lot of confidence together as a team. You have to break that confidence," Selznick said. "If you are in a serving frame of mind, you can try to get a few points off of them. A team has to serve tough enough to really get them in trouble. If you don't serve tough and Kerri and Misty are out there playing their game, they're going to win." |
