Olivia Dunne may not be on Team USA, but the popular LSU gymnast will undoubtedly be at the Paris Olympics.
The Instagram influencer and girlfriend of Pittsburgh Pirates star Paul Skenes filmed herself during Saturday’s beach volleyball match: Sophie Bukovec and Heather Bansley of the Canadian team versus Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss of the American team.
And to Dunne’s delight, it was her LSU Tigers colleagues Kloth and Nuss who emerged victorious: 21-17, 21-14.
“Geaux Tigers & Geaux US,” read a caption on LSU’s Instagram page, alongside a photo of Dunne, Nuss and Kloth making the school’s “L” hand sign.
Dunne also posted a photo of himself during the race on Instagram, with Paris’s glittering Eiffel Tower in the background.
Unlike generations of Californians who grew up playing volleyball on local beaches as kids, Kloth and teammate Kristen Nuss didn’t get into the sandy side of the sport until later. After teaming up at LSU, they stayed in Louisiana, training in Nuss’s hometown of New Orleans.
Dunne photographed herself on Instagram, with Paris’ glittering Eiffel Tower in the background
Former LSU Tigers Kristen Nuss (left), Olivia Dunne (center) and Taryn Kloth (right)
And when the world’s second-best team made its debut Saturday night with a 21-17, 21-14 victory over Canada at the Eiffel Tower Stadium in Paris, it became the first American beach volleyball pair ever to go for Olympic gold without any ties to the Golden State.
“We said we wanted to rewrite the script and change that,” Nuss said in a recent phone interview before the pair left for Paris. “You had to move to California. You had to live in California to get anywhere in this sport. And I think we’ve done a really good job of changing that.”
Beach volleyball was made for and in California, with its miles of sandy beaches and climate that allows athletes to play year-round.
Kloth played indoor volleyball at Creighton in Omaha, Nebraska—another city decidedly not on the beach—and arrived at LSU with the intention of learning and learning. Her only experience with the beach game was hitting a ball with friends at a lake in South Dakota.
Kloth, right, and Nuss, left, celebrate victory in the women’s beach volleyball match in Pool B
“I wouldn’t even call it a beach. I would call it dirty,” she said. “It was like concrete with a little bit of dust on it, and we just played indoor volleyball outside.”
Kloth picked up the beach game quickly enough that she went 27-0 with two different partners in her first full season at LSU, 2020. In her sophomore year, she and Nuss teamed up to go 36-0 — including a pair of doubleheader wins over UCLA and top-seeded USC.
By the time she graduated, Kloth had received enough support to want to stay.
“I was just thrown into a whole different culture,” she said. “And they were just so kind to welcome me and know that I didn’t have family here like everyone else probably did.”