Beach volleyball player with Sioux Falls roots aims for 2024 Olympics

While you’ve been watching the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Taryn Kloth has been dreaming of Paris.

That’s where the Olympic traveling carnival heads next for the Games in 2024.

Kloth is training and planning with hopes of qualifying for Team USA in women’s beach volleyball.

It’s a seemingly contradictory destination for a woman who grew up in Sioux Falls, where beaches are decidedly less – beachy. The O’Gorman High School graduate’s volleyball journey has taken her steadily south, landing in the surf and sand of Louisiana.

“Everything is so different down here,” Kloth said. “The first month, I would call my parents and say I am in a different country. It’s obviously amazing because I’m still here.”

Beach volleyball wasn’t the plan.

Kloth led the O’Gorman Knights to two state championships before graduating in 2015. Then, she headed to Omaha to play for Creighton University. In her four years with the Bluejays, Kloth was named an All-American, the team won four Big East Conference titles and made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament in 2016.

She excelled academically as well, earning the Big East’s Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year award and a $4,000 scholarship toward graduate studies.

With a degree in finance, she headed to Louisiana State University to pursue an MBA.

Kloth didn’t necessarily go to LSU to play beach volleyball. She was there for the education. But as the old saying goes, when in Baton Rouge …

“I just fell in love with the beach world,” she said.

At LSU, she paired up with Kristen Nuss, a Louisiana native who happens to have the most wins in women’s beach volleyball history.

With Nuss’ experience and Kloth’s raw beach talent and stature – she’s 6-foot-4 – they went undefeated in the 2021 season and won the American Volleyball Coaches Association Pair of the Year.

That would suggest Kloth is a natural on the sand, but that wasn’t the case.

“It was unbelievably frustrating,” she said of those early days.

The shifting sand, playing in the wind and the different tactics of two-person volleyball all made for a steep curve.

“I would be at practice and just be angry,” she said. “I had no idea what I was doing, and it was just driving me crazy.”

Being the best team in college naturally allows one to think beyond the amateur ranks. And while it’s not as lucrative as many other sports, there is a world of professional beach volleyball that stretches around the globe.

Kloth and Nuss officially entered the pro ranks in May, winning their first tournament in the friendly surroundings of Coconut Beach on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. They’ve won all three professional tournaments they’ve entered.

The pair will continue competing across the country in the American Volleyball Professionals tour this year with plans to enter the Federation Internationale de Volleyball – or FIVB – circuit next year. Teams accumulate points for winning in the AVP that determine their seedings in tournaments at home and abroad. Ultimately, it’s the points that make you eligible for consideration for the Olympics.

Each country sends two teams to the games.

Winning the world championships or a continental cup gets you into the Olympics, but ultimately the country’s federation decides which teams represent them.

“There is very little margin for error,” Kloth said. “Especially when you are competing against the top athletes.”

For now, the goal is to enter as many tournaments as possible. Paying for it is a part-time job in itself, she added.

They are constantly connecting with sponsors to keep TKN Tandem on the road.

Most of the professional volleyball players are based in California, but Kloth and Nuss plan to remain in Louisiana. It makes it tougher to get the attention of the bigger sponsors in the sport, though winning certainly helps. But it means they also are concentrating on hometown supporters, including in Sioux Falls.

“We are an unlikely pair and from places that are not known for beach volleyball,” Kloth said.

With an MBA in hand and a history of determination and success, Kloth’s future looks bright. Her plan is to build a career that combines sports and business.

“I love people, and I love sports,” she said. “I am very hopeful that I find something that I am very passionate about.”

But that future can wait.

“I want to be an Olympian first.”

WEBSITE: tknvball.com

Editor’s note: Taryn Kloth’s last name was misspelled when the story was originally published.