LONG BEACH – Three Olympic gold medals. One hundred eighteen first-place finishes. More than $2 million in prize money.
Kerri Walsh Jennings’ 14-year career can be quantified by these three accomplishments. But her value to beach volleyball and its future success extends beyond the stat sheet and is reflected by her peers’ testimonies.
“If you remember, the NBA was on tape-delay television when Michael Jordan started appearing in Nike commercials. Then, all of a sudden — boom, the NBA explodes,” said Leonard Armato, the former CEO of the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) and promoter for the ASICS World Series of Volleyball event being played at Alamitos Beach this week.
“So Kerri Walsh can be for beach volleyball what Michael Jordan was for basketball.”
Walsh Jennings, a Manhattan Beach resident, is competing on home sand in an international tournament for the first time in more than a decade. It has been 11 years since Walsh Jennings and former partner Misty May-Treanor captured the Swatch-FIVB World Tour Nissan Grand Slam at the then-Home Depot Center in Carson. Walsh Jennings missed the 2013 FIVB event here after giving birth to her third child. She played in an ancillary event.
From 2001-12, Walsh Jennings and May-Treanor dominated their competition and are commonly referred to as the greatest pair in beach volleyball history. But when May-Treanor, 36, retired after the 2012 London Olympics, Walsh Jennings needed to look no further than across the net for her new partner.
She is now teamed with April Ross, who with partner Jen Kessy lost to Walsh Jennings and May-Treanor in the gold-medal match of the London Olympics.
“I didn’t know much about her as a person before, other than she was a gnarly competitor,” Ross said. “I’d say my opinion is now even higher than it was, because I’m seeing her from the same side of the net, because she is the hardest worker.”
The duo won a pair of FIVB tournaments earlier this season but stumbled recently, placing ninth at July’s FIVB Grand Slam events in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
“Two weeks ago, we were very happy, then we didn’t have a good week,” Walsh Jennings said. “We have to trust the process. It’s a bump in the road. We just want to keep getting better. So far we’re playing well (in Long Beach).”
They won their final Pool A match Thursday, 21-15, 21-18, over a Canadian duo, and will receive a bye into the round of 16 Friday.
Despite this month’s struggles, Walsh Jennings and Ross are still the top seed at the World Series of Beach Volleyball and ranked fourth on the planet by FIVB.
While Walsh Jennings might be miles from the pinnacle she reached with May-Treanor, she and Ross have managed to string together a successful early partnership.
“It’s exactly the same, as far as what we need to do (as a team) to be dominant,” Walsh Jennings said. “It’s all the same but with different characters. I have a new favorite quote — different people bring out a different beast in you.”
Walsh Jennings has also unleashed the beast in Ross, who has won eight tournaments in 15 attempts with her new partner after finishing first in 27 of 168 events without her.
“Obviously Kerri casts such a big shadow because she’s the winningest player, she’s got three gold medals, so everybody wants to talk about her,” Armato said. “But April won the silver in London, and then Kerri and April together form an amazing duo.”
While the world witnessed Walsh Jennings win gold on beach volleyball’s brightest stage three times, fewer see her equally impressive off-court character.
“We all know what she does on the beach with the gold medals and all the championships, but she’s also an unbelievable role model,” said Kevin Wulff, CEO of Walsh Jennings’ newest sponsor, ASICS.
“She’s a great mother. She has to balance time like we all do — life’s not always easy. She’s a tremendous, tremendous influence with young volleyball players and athletes all over the world.”
Walsh Jennings, a mother of three, has spent the last five years balancing her family and volleyball — even competing in the London Olympics while five weeks pregnant.
“I never knew how she did it all, especially after having kids … she’s a superhuman superhero,” Ross said. “Especially her energy level off the court. I could never do what she does.”
THURSDAY’S MATCHES
Walsh Jennings and Ross were one of two U.S. teams to earn a bye to the round of 16. Lauren Fendrick and Brooke Sweat also went 3-0 to win Pool D and earned a bye.
All eight pool winners get byes to the round of 16. Teams finishing second and third will play in the round of 24 starting Friday morning.
In pool E, Emily Day/Summer Ross dropped their final match to one of the powerful Brazilian teams but finished 2-1 and will play in the round of 24.
Three U.S. teams did not advance. Lane Carino/Brittany Hochevar went 1-2 in Pool F to tie for third, as did Nicole Branagh/Whitney Pavlik in Pool B, but each lost a head-to-head tie breaker to advance.
The team of Hughes/Engle went 0-3 in Group C.
The men will play three rounds Friday, the round of 24 in the morning, round of 16 in the afternoon and the four matches in the quarterfinals at 5 p.m.
All six U.S. men’s teams advanced to the single-elimination round, led by Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal, who were pushed to three sets in their final match and took Pool A 3-0.
Bob Keisser and Michael Peterson contributed to this story.