Join Universal Sports as we ring in 2010 with a look back at the best athletes and top sports stories of the past 10 years. Our top team goes to Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who have notched three world titles, two Olympic gold medals and a total of 99 victories together.
By Jon Ackerman
If Kerri Walsh had even the slightest clue that her life's course was about to take a dramatic turn toward success and happiness, she surely wouldn't have been on the verge of a panic attack. And she would have engraved the date into a nearby palm tree, or at least her memory.
Yet, as she stepped onto the sands of southern California's Huntington Beach in early January 2001, all she could think about was not looking "silly."
Walsh, already an indoor Olympian and four-time All-American at Stanford, was about to try the sport's beach version with Misty May, who starred indoors at Long Beach State but took fifth on the sand at the Sydney Olympics with Holly McPeak. At the time, Walsh was getting a bit burned out from the sport and May was looking for a younger partner. The girls knew each other as opponents in high school and college, but their parents met at a family center in Sydney the previous summer. That impromptu meeting first broached the idea of teaming up their daughters on the beach.
"She drove down to my house in California and I said, 'Why don't you just try it? Either you like it or you don't,'" May recalls.
"I had never played," Walsh says. "I consciously avoided it basically my whole life. I grew up near Santa Cruz, which is a beach in northern California, and I would just avoid it because I knew I would look silly... So when Misty called it was literally the first time I ever started practicing."
Despite her jitters, she took the court in Huntington Beach and trained with May against two men's players. Walsh recalls it being a good day, and she clearly wasn't turned off by the beach game. "I think starting on day one we had something: chemistry," Walsh says.
Unbeknownst to anyone that day, Walsh also started something special with one of the guys on the other side of the net. Casey Jennings, now her husband with which she has one child and another on the way, saw first-hand the beginning of what would become the greatest beach volleyball team of all-time. Thus, May and Walsh are Universal Sports' Team of the Decade.
"That day changed my life in so many beautiful ways," Walsh says, though she can't remember the exact day. "...I've looked through my journals. I have one that I can't find that I know I wrote something about it."
Regardless, Walsh and May have written plenty of history since that fateful day. Most notable are the Olympic gold medals in Athens and Beijing, making them the first beach volleyball players to win twice. They also became the first team to win three world titles, as they captured gold at the 2003, '05 and '07 World Championships. Had they played in 2009 (Walsh was sidelined due to pregnancy, May with an Achilles injury), they would have been the odds-on favorites to take a fourth crown.
But aside from dominating the FIVB World Tour whenever they decide to play internationally, May and Walsh have owned the AVP Tour since 2003, the first year they appeared on the domestic circuit as a team. Aside from this past season, the tandem has led the tour in wins each year, collecting titles at an 81-percent clip (64 of 79 tournaments).
Bringing in 19 of those tournament wins was a 112-match winning streak that spanned 12 months in 2007 and '08, including the Beijing Games. That record topped the previous best of 90 matches in a row, also set by May and Walsh, in 2003 and '04.
Overall, May and Walsh boast 99 career victories -- 35 of which came on the FIVB Tour, another all-time best. Only the sport's early pioneers, Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, have won more tournaments (114). It's worth noting, however, that Smith and Stoklos never played more than three international events in a season together.
And May and Walsh aren't done yet. They won't play together in 2010, as Walsh is pregnant with her second child, leaving May to likely play with Nicole Branagh. But if all goes as planned, they'll be back together in time to pursue a third Olympic gold medal at the 2012 London Games.
Next year will mark the first time since 2001 that May plays a season without Walsh. That's not to say, however, that world's best duo never considered finding other partners. With the hoopla of winning a first Olympic title having subsided, and no major goals on the immediate horizon, a few uncharacteristic losses crept into their 2006 season. Then a few people began to whisper that their reign may have passed.
"There were some rumors that had circulated, not from us but from outside people," May says.
"It was the calm after the storm and I think we kind of got stagnant, we stopped growing," Walsh says. "And that was on us. It was great because it was a gut-check, it was like, 'Okay, let's confront this now. Let's choose to go one way or the other, but let's make that choice.' And it was a no-brainer really."
A heart-to-heart conversation between the two ultimately resolved the matter and made sure their funk (by their standards) didn't continue. Since 2006, they've been eliminated in consecutive tournaments only once. Yet despite all the records, streaks and accolades, one loss in particular shows exactly how special the May-Walsh partnership is.
It was the final event of this past AVP season, a Brazil vs. United States challenge in Arizona, and the only tournament May played all season. They had hardly trained together leading up to the event, but in their first real action together in over a year, May and Walsh defeated each of the four Brazilian teams they faced, including the top two teams from the 2009 FIVB Tour.
In the women's final, May and Walsh again met the duo of Juliana Silva and Larissa Franca, which won a record eight FIVB events in 2009. The Americans ultimately lost, but don't think it went unnoticed that a rusty May/Walsh duo beat the best team in the world when it was in peak form, and merely ran out of energy in the rematch.
"I knew it was only a matter of time and I thought it would happen pretty fast. But not as fast as it did," May says.
She's referring to the success the duo found when they first teamed up in 2001, but the statement could prove true for when May and Walsh rejoin forces in the future. That much chemistry doesn't evaporate easily.
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