Terese Cannon: Scrapping a six-year Olympic plan to “go play because you like playing”

HERMOSA BEACH, California — It was early September, and Scott Davenport had a terrible idea. A wonderful idea. A terrible, horrible, no good, positively brilliant idea.

He was going to take Terese Cannon, a left side blocker, and partner her with Megan Kraft…another left side blocker.

Come again?

In Davenport’s defense, this was not the originally intended plan. That had gone to the wayside when Cannon’s partner, Sarah Sponcil, had abruptly decided to transition from beach to indoor in the midst of an Olympic run in which they were ranked No. 7 in the world, and Kraft’s partner, Emily Stockman, had decided, with almost equal abruptness, to retire amidst that same Olympic run, though their odds were significantly lower than the latter’s.

For six years, Cannon had scripted her beach volleyball career around this exact Olympic quad; Kraft had planned on skipping her fall semester at USC to continue playing internationally with Stockman, piling up Olympic points and finishes. Now both were unexpected free agents, fielding calls and text messages from defenders seeking a talented, left side blocker.

Cannon looked at Kraft. Kraft at Cannon.

Shrug.

Meanwhile, Davenport worked behind the scenes.

“Me and Sarah were working with Scott, and Meg and Emily were working with Scott, and the way it worked was, Emily retired, Sarah decided to take a break, and Scott also took a different job [with USA Volleyball] and both of us were like ‘Both of us don’t have teams anymore,’ ” Cannon said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “The timing of it was kind of crazy.”

It was a puzzling move on the surface, Cannon and Kraft both eschewing experienced and talented defenders to partner with someone who plays the same side and position. But Davenport isn’t one of the most sought-after coaches in the USA for naught. A mastermind of gameplans and strategy, he had more than an inkling the two would work well together.

“I did tell Meg when she first came to me that you’re not going to go to the Olympics and medal as a blocker, you’re going to go right side defender with whomever that may be,” Davenport recalled. “We did a bunch of defensive drills. I wanted to see what she had skillset wise. She’s just so smart and adaptable, so we did some stuff and I was like ‘Damn. It’ll take you a little to get used to reading and being comfortable back there’ but she’s athletic enough to get it done and smart enough and Terese is super smart and technical.”

This wasn’t the first time he had drawn up and executed on an interesting experiment. In 2017, he had been working with Stockman and Kim DiCello and Kolinske and Betsi Flint, as well as Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes. While both of his American teams were enjoying success on the AVP, medals internationally were lacking.

Why not put Kolinske with Stockman?

While they would end up opting for Evie Matthews as their head coach, the idea proved sound enough: In 2021, they nearly qualified for the Tokyo Olympics and finished top-10 in the world rankings.

“They’re all in the same system, same training, same verbiage. When they switched it was seamless and didn’t take them long to have success,” Davenport said. “It made sense when Sponcil went to play indoor, and with Emily’s retirement. You guys kind of have the same brain, you speak the same language, you remember the information, and it’s the same system. You’re not having to go through any growing pains and reinvent the wheel. You’re on the same page already.”

They were more than even Davenport knew. When Cannon competed at USC, she majored in accounting. Kraft’s major? You guessed it.

“We laugh and joke about it that we both studied accounting,” Kraft said. “We think that way and we’re very analytical, taking data points of what we’re seeing and it’s cool that we’re able to talk to each other in game. That’s the one thing that’s been really different in our partnership. She’s really focused and a great leader.”

Both were also in a similar emotional state when it came to beach volleyball. Cannon had run the full gamut, from denial to confusion after Sponcil told her she needed a break from the beach. While her and Sponcil had been streaky, mixing a pair of medals — bronze in Itapema, silver in Ostrava — with a pair of 13th place finishes in three tournaments, the potential had been proven. They had beaten nearly every top team in the world, twice sweeping Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, twice beating Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson. With entry deadlines passed, she had to miss the Manhattan Beach and Chicago Gold Series, her favorite events on the schedule.

“It was tough because it’s a two-year plan, and I know we were pretty behind, not super behind, but we had almost a full year of tournaments left to play,” Cannon said. “In my mind, anything can happen in sports. If we just play like we did in Ostrava, which is hard to do, but in theory it could happen, that was where my mind was, and then having to reevaluate, it’s out of your hands, there’s nothing you can do. Every decision I’ve made the past six years has been around this Olympics and to have that taken away was tough. We’d beaten both of the top two teams. If we iron out a few things, who’s to say we can’t beat them consistently?”

In came Kraft, who had decided, with the Olympics out of the question, to enroll at USC for her final year. The mastermind, two-steps-ahead thinking of Davenport came to fruition both on and off the court. Off the court, Cannon would call her parents and boyfriend after practice, “giddy,” she said, because practice was so fun. “Couldn’t believe it.”

That translated on the court.

Her passion revived, Cannon and Kraft qualified for the Paris Elite16 and played well against three of the top teams in the world, losing narrowly to Nuss and Kloth (18-21, 20-22), Australians and Olympic silver medalists Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho (21-18, 23-25, 11-15), and Italians Valentina Gottardi and Marta Menegatti (16-21, 21-16, 12-15). One week later, at the World Championships, they became the tournament’s most delightful surprise, winning pool with a stunner over China’s Chen Xue and Xinyi Xia (22-20, 21-14) and advancing to the ninth-place rounds with a white-knuckler over Brazil’s Andressa Cavalcanti and Vitoria De Souza (22-24, 24-22, 15-12).

It wasn’t just the play of Kraft, however, that revived a piece of Cannon she hadn’t realized she’d lost. It was the way they communicated and competed: Together.

“We also talked about how we never feel like we’re out of a game, even if we’re down five,” Kraft said. “If we can just play volleyball the way we know how to play we can set up a chess game against our opponents and come back. She is the leader of that next point mentality.”

They needed every bit of that mentality against Brazil, a match in which they found themselves down 13-18 and barely realized it. They knew — or thought they knew — they’d be just fine. Cannon had a good laugh when she rewatched that match on film. She had no idea they had been in such a dire situation.

“Watching it back, I was like ‘Oh, my God! What is happening?’ ” Cannon said, laughing. “I don’t remember it being that big.”

Davenport wasn’t surprised.

“Talking to Scott, he said you need something refreshing and someone who is like-minded with you and how you see the game,” Cannon said. “That was exciting to me. We’ll be running defensive plays and I’ll ask Meg what she’s seeing and because we were a new team. I’ve seen her play. She’s athletic and she makes it look effortless. She just makes it look so much easier than me. Playing against her and seeing her play a lot and Scott said you’re going to be happy, I said ‘OK, let’s give it a try.’ It was pretty easy. We didn’t think we would play these events to begin with.

“At the end of this year I finally found my passion again. I like to compete and travel internationally because I want to be one of the best players in the world, so whether we’re going to go to the Olympics or not it’s still really cool for me to go to those Elite16 and Challenge events against the other top teams in the world and see how we stack up. I just remember why we like doing it and why it’s fun. Olympics or no Olympics, I still want to be the best.”

The Olympics, she knows, are out of the question. It’s why Kraft enrolled at USC. But that’s an event that happens once every four years. Why would Cannon let that deter her from her pursuit of being one of the best in the world? And that pursuit, make no mistake, is on.

Two weeks ago, Cannon and Kraft won a qualifier to compete in the NORCECA Continental Championships, an event loaded with points but not necessarily stiff competition. With their 13th in Ostrava, ninth at World Championships, and whatever finish they earn next week at the Nuvali Challenge in the Philippines and the NORCECA in the Dominican Republic — a minimum of a semifinal berth is a reasonable expectation — they will be in an excellent position at the onset of the 2024 season.

“It was a funky situation and I was trying to decide what I wanted to do the rest of the year and I just wanted to go compete and have fun doing it,” Cannon said. “At this point, the Olympics were out of the question and you might as well go and play because you like playing.”